[Tex/LaTex] Floating TikZ picture within text in mdframed

floatsmdframedtikz-pgfwrapfigure

When there is not enough space for TikZ picture at the end of a text, it will goes to the next page, and leaves an empty space after the text. Is there a standard method for putting TikZ picture in the middle of text, flowing the text to the next page, instead of pushing TikZ picture?

A possible method is using wrapfig page, to put TikZ picture inside wrapfigure. This is a flexible method for floating smaller (e.g. half-sized) TikZ picture within text. I am curious if there is a simpler method for arranging full-width TikZ picture within text to avoid any gap throughout the text.

Here is a very simple example:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{mdframed}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}
\begin{mdframed}
    \lipsum[1-2]
\begin{tikzpicture}
   \draw[fill=blue] (0,0) rectangle (11,11);
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{mdframed}
\end{document}

Since the TikZ picture does not fit in the first page, it will goes to the second page and leave an empty space at the bottom of first page. I want to keep the TikZ picture in the first page, and push the excess text to the second page.

In a long text with several TikZ pictures, I want to avoid any gap within the text.

Best Answer

The package mdframed also tcolorbox use internal saveboxes. Inside such TeX-construction you can't use any floating material. So you have to adjust manual or avoid such an environment.

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[Tex/LaTex] Make tikz picture floating

The existence of anything nontrivial in the optional after parameter of \titleformat seems to cause titlesec to insert a new line. I don't know how to avoid that, but a simple \vspace{-\baselineskip} should undo the effect.

\titleformat{name=\section,page=odd}[display]
  {\newpage\secstyle} % format
  {} % label
  {10pt} %sep
  {\vspace{-5mm}\filcenter\textls[-50]} %before
  [\monthtab{Chapname}{\arabic{chapter}}\vspace{-\baselineskip}] % after

Alternatively, you can add the \monthtab to the before argument:

\titleformat{name=\section,page=odd}[display]
  {\newpage\secstyle} % format
  {} % label
  {10pt} %sep
  {\vspace{-5mm}\monthtab{Chapname}{\arabic{chapter}}%
   \filcenter\textls[-50]}

The current \monthtab macro contains two uncommented newlines, both of which add a space to the text. To avoid this, add a comment character at the end of the line, like

\newcommand{\monthtab}[2]{% <--- comment here
  \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture,overlay]
      \node[yshift={ -3*(mod(#2-1,6)+1)*1cm},xshift=-0.5cm] at (current page.north east) {
      \tikz\shade[shading=axis,bottom color=white,top color=gray!50,shading angle=-90] 
        (0,0) rectangle (1cm,3cm) node[rotate=90,pos=0.5] {\Large\scshape #1};
    };
  \end{tikzpicture}% <--- comment here
}

[Tex/LaTex] How to float figure within multicol text

There are a couple of possibilities here. For two-column text in the article class, you don't need the multicols environment other than to balance the columns at the end, or if you want to switch to single-column and back without incurring a page break. Just pass the twocolumn option to article. In that case, using the figure environment will indeed give you a single-column floating figure (that will usually appear at the top of the next column, but you can tweak the positioning if you need to).

Second, if you truly need the multicols environment, then the package documentation states that single-column floats are incompatible with multicols. You can use the starred forms (figure* or table*) which will take up a full page width, as @Frg points out. As it turns out, positioning floats is very complicated, and made even more so in the multi-column case. See for instance this document, which documents some of the challenges involved; both this document and the multicol package were written by Frank Mittelbach, who is heavily involved in the LaTeX3 effort, so I'd guess that if multicol doesn't support floats yet, it's still not a solved problem :)

Finally, you can abandon flexibility, and resort to trial-and-error: move the content you wish to float around in your source, and recompile and try again until it looks good. If this is your only viable approach, I'd suggest waiting until the surrounding text has mostly stabilized, so you don't waste time perfecting a layout that will just break with the next edit...

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Make tikz picture floating

[Tex/LaTex] How to float figure within multicol text

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