How to insert an image into a two-column document such that the text flows from TL, BL, TR and finally BR?

Question

I don't like the following:

I want the following:

Code:

\documentclass[demo,12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{multicol,lipsum,graphicx}
\title{Foo Bar Baz}
\author{Foo Bar Baz}
\date{\today}
\begin{document}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}
\lipsum[1]
\end{abstract}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[2]
\end{multicols}

\begin{figure}[hbpt]
\centering
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth]{}
\caption{Foo Bar Baz}
\end{figure}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum[3]
\end{multicols}

\end{document}

How to insert an image into a two-column document such that the text flows from TL (top left), BL (bottom left), TR (top right) and finally BR (bottom right)?

Answer 1

There is no easy way to do this, as far as I'm aware. You can't put floats inside multicol so that's not an option. Do you really need the figure right there? Wouldn't it be easier to use give your document class the twocolumn option and have the figure float to wherever makes sense (top or bottom of the page).

The LaTeX wikibook has no good advice on this issue, and I expect it's simply something that is very difficult to do.