multicolpage-breaking
This is a follow up to the question How do I force a column-break in a multi-column page?. Compiling code from the accepted answer at http://latex.informatik.uni-halle.de/latex-online/latex.php (and at my local machine as well) gives strange output: text in left column is stretched, it seems that the \vfill command has been ignored.
How to fix this behaviour? Here is the picture of the output:
\vfill\null after the last line to break.\columnbreak after \vfill\null.
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[a4paper,margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{lipsum,multicol}
\usepackage[colorlinks]{hyperref}
\title{Introduction to \LaTeX}
\author{xport}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\maketitle
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section*{Abstract}
\lipsum[1-2]
\vfill\null
\columnbreak
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\tableofcontents
%\vfill\null
%\columnbreak
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
\section{Counter}
\lipsum[1]
\section{Box}
\lipsum[1]
\subsection{Parbox}
\lipsum[1]
\subsection{Rule}
\lipsum[1]
\end{multicols}
\end{document}
My immediate thought here is to use \afterpage. This should result in a placement one page after it's mentioned:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx,lipsum,afterpage}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{graphicx,lipsum,afterpage}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-20]
\afterpage{
\thispagestyle{empty}\addtocounter{page}{-1}%
\noindent\includegraphics[width=\textwidth,height=\textheight]{example-image-a}%
}
\lipsum[21-40]
\end{document}
The above shows pages 3 and 4 (top), with the image inserted about two-thirds from the top on page 3. \afterpage then inserts a header/footer-less page (\thispagestyle{empty}) with the image stretched to the text block (width=\textwidth,height=\textheight) on a subsequent page. Adding \addtocounter{page}{-1} steps back the page counter so that the page seems to be literally inserted independently from the document flow (and may not be what you're after entirely, but something similar to \includepdf from pdfpages).
As far as I know, this use (with afterpage) should be free from problems with other unprocessed floats since it doesn't interface with the algorithm of float placement.
Of course, the image can also be made to fill the entire page. The answer is merely geared towards showcase the possibility.
Best Answer
Modified from referenced solution: