Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques

7.7. Some float packages 179
rflt (right), lflt (left), or vflt (variable, i.e. p). If no option is given, the
default is vflt.
\begin{floatingtable}[pos]{
\begin{tabular}{table specs}
table entries
\end{tabular}}
Optional \caption command
\end{floatingtable}
To include a table with text,
the usage is slightly different, as
shown at the left. That is, the entire
table appears in place of the
wth for a figure, and only the caption
in placed in the environment
itself.
Both these environments are
to be placed at the start of the paragraph that is to flow around the figure
or table. The flowing cannot start in the middle of a paragraph.
There is some very tricky coding to get the flowing text to work properly,
and needless to say, there are many things that can go wrong. Please
read the accompanying manual for more details.
7.7.3 Defining new floats and styles
Package: For authors who are not satisfied with the standard float style, or who
float need additional floating environments, we recommend the float package
by Anselm Lingnau. With this package, one defines a new float type with
\newfloat{name}{loc}{ext}[within]
where name is the name of the new float environment, loc is the default
placement letters (selection of tbhpH), ext is the extension of the file
containing the list of this float type, and the optional within is the name
of a counter (e.g., chapter) within which the numbering is reset.
For example, to define a plate environment that behaves just like
figure but which is numbered separately as Plate xxx, with the numbers
reset within each chapter, give
\newfloat{plate}{p}{lop}[chapter]
\floatname{plate}{Plate}
The first line defines the new environment, with default placement on a
float page. The second states that the captions associated with this float
are to start with the word ‘Plate’; without this, they would be labeled as
‘plate’, the same as the environment name itself.
The information for the list of plates is stored in a file with extension
.lop, in the same way that the list of figures is in a file with extension
.lof (Section 3.4.4). This list is printed by reading in this file with the
command
\listof{plate}{List of Plates}
where ‘List of Plates’ is the list title.
The default placement parameters for any float environment, including
the standard figure and table ones, can be redefined with