Wide float positioning in two-column document

Question

I am writing a lab report formatted in two columns. It is set to two columns at the beginning by\documentclass[a4paper,11pt,twocolumn]{article}, rather than using the multicols package, because I use a lot of single column floats that multicols does not seem to support.

Unfortunately, it seems that twocolumns does not support wide floats as well as multicols does. According to the wiki wide floats in this format are only allowed at the top of a page, or on a new page. There is a partial fix listed there to allow placement at the bottom of pages, although this didn't work for me. Neither does the built-in positioning work properly - asking for the float to be put at the top of the page seems to put it at the top of the NEXT page. Even if there are multiple wide floats, they all get put on the next page.

So, my question is this: is there any way to make wide floats obey the tbH position commands like the single-width ones, without using multicol?

Thanks

Answer 1

h floats don't really make sense in two column. In the standard twocolumn mode the first column may already have been set to full height by the time the float is seen, and it can't be undone at that point, which is why the system always adds floats to the next page. b could have been supported with the same restrictions as t it just wasn't added. There are packages that add it. You say "they don't work for me" but that doesn't give much information. With the possible exception of the first page you should be able to get a float onto any page by moving it forwards in the source file.