Column width in multicol and using float environments

Question

I'm trying to write my first report ever using LaTeX. I want it to have two columns so I'm using the multicol package. The columns are too narrow though, I want it to be wide like, say, elsevier style articles.

Also is there really no way of inserting floats (figures, pgf graphics) into this two column setup? I need to show some images and make a graphic to show my experimental results.

Answer 1

If you need an overall twocolumn layout, you could use the twocolumn option.

If you want to have a figure with a caption inside the multicol environment, you could use the caption package. The separation between the columns can be adjusted by the length columnsep. The width of the columns depends on the available text width, of course. See the following example:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{caption}
\setlength{\columnsep}{3cm}
\begin{document}
\chapter{A chapter}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[1-2]

\bigskip
\rule{0.8\columnwidth}{1cm}
\captionof{figure}{A figure}\label{figure1}
\bigskip

\lipsum[3]
\end{multicols}
\chapter{Another chapter}
See figure~\ref{figure1}.
\begin{figure}%
\rule{0.8\columnwidth}{1cm}
\caption{Another figure}
\label{figure2}
\end{figure}
\chapter{A third chapter}
See figure~\ref{figure2}.
\end{document}

(The lipsumpackage is only for producing the sample text, it is not part of the solution.)