titlestwo-column
I recently switched from using multicols to twocolumn in the documentclass since multicols tends to mess with my graphics. However, this also means that my title page is now also two colums, which I'd like to change.
Keep in mind that I'd still like to keep my abstract on the same page as the title. I use \noindent\makebox[\linewidth]{\rule{\paperwidth}{0.4pt}} to create a horizontal line after my titel. Everything after that should be two column.
The definition of the titlepage environment in article.cls depends on whether compatibility mode is on/off, but both variants include
\if@restonecol\twocolumn \else \newpage \fi
in the code to be executed at the end of the environment. In your version of titlepage, you simply switch to \onecolumn (which makes \@restonecoltrue superfluous) at the start of the environment, so you need to switch back to \twocolumn at the end. I suggest, however, to simply use the original non-compatibility variant of titlepage, as this will make your custom class also work in onecolumn mode.
First the bad news:
You are correct that as implemented two-column floats are never inserted on the page on which their definition falls. Actually most people find this isn't a problem in practice as the figure* environment doesn't need to be near the first \ref to the figure, however it would be good not to have that restriction.
It would in fact be relatively easy to allow floats to float to the top if they fell in the first column using the same mechanism as the single column case, however the problem is that if the definition falls in the second column then the first column has already been set and saved in a box of full height and so the full width float can not be added.
Now the good news
LaTeX is a very open system, not only is it open source so you can look at the source and change things, its code is modifiable from within the document itself. Any document can redefine any latex definition.
The code below shows how you can automate the insertion of a figure definition on the page before the first reference, so that it is positioned at the top of the page with teh reference.
As posted below it only works with one figure but it would be easy to extend this with some declarative macros so that each figure was added to a list to be inserted as needed. (But it's late and I wanted to show the result of a few minutes tinkering). So while the code below probably isn't production ready it does I hope show that you shouldn't abandon the idea of using LaTeX just because of some perceived restrictions. Other alternative systems may well have restrictions that they don't document so well and that are harder to work round:-)
\documentclass[12pt, twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\output\expandafter{\the\output\floatfix}
\makeatletter
\def\floatfix{%
\expandafter\ifx\csname r@x@one\endcsname\relax
\else
\ifnum\c@page=\numexpr\expandafter\expandafter\expandafter
\@secondoftwo\csname r@x@one\endcsname-1\relax
\aftergroup\figone
\fi
\fi}
\makeatother
\begin{document}
\section*{Introduction}
\def\figone{%
\begin{figure*}[tbph]
\makebox[\textwidth]{\framebox[5cm]{\rule{0pt}{5cm}}}
\caption{And here is the actual figure.
\label{one}}
\end{figure*}
\global\let\figone\relax}
\setlipsumdefault{13-19}
\lipsum
\textbf{Here is where I reference Figure~\ref{one}\label{x@one}}
\lipsum
\end{document}
Best Answer
Would this be what you want? It uses the
stripenvironment, fromcuted: