[Tex/LaTex] \maketitle Error

Question

\documentclass{doublecol-new}
\def\newblock{\hskip .11em plus .33em minus .07em}

\begin{document}
\setcounter{page}{1}
\LRH{ABCD}
\RRH{EFGH}
\VOL{x}
\ISSUE{x}
\PUBYEAR{xxxx}
\BottomCatch

\PUBYEAR{201X}
\subtitle{}
\title{IJKL}
\authorA{}
\affA{}
\authorB{}
\affB{}
\authorC{}
\affC{}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}

\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}

\end{document}

When I try to compile this minimum working example, I get an error

! Output loop—100 consecutive dead cycles.

\clearpage …rite \m@ne {}\vbox {}\penalty -\@Mi

l.45 \maketitle

Could anybody please help me fix this?

PS: Link to the .cls file: http://www.inderscience.com/www/download/latex-double-column.zip.
Unzipping the linked file would provide the .cls file.

Answer 1

The document works if you force the old behaviour by adding

\RequirePackage[2014/01/01]{latexrelease}

as the very first line.

There were several fixes to the float handling in double column documents in the 2014 and 2015 latex releases, and these combined with the rather bizarre coding on the class file cause latex to loop.

I'm just looking to see if the format can be made more robust to give a more helpful error (or work) but the above should get you working again. The main problem is that \BottomCatch causes a float of negative height (height -7pt, depth 0pt) to be added and while normally latex copes with such things here it fails to flush the float at \end{document} (so tries 100 times then gives up with an error).

---

Actually it is hard to blame the class file, here is a MWE just using article

%\RequirePackage[2014/01/01]{latexrelease}

\documentclass{article}


\begin{document}

\begin{table}
\vspace{-15pt}
\end{table}


\end{document}