Floats in the middle of paragraphs

Question

How would you place a float like this with LaTeX?

Note that it's in the middle of a sentence. Normal float placement rules could only find the right page to put the float on. Then it's a matter of where on the page it's visually pleasing, regardless of where paragraph breaks happen to be. I think a placement in the middle of the page like this often looks better than at the top or bottom of the page, even though it perhaps has fallen out of style. (This example is printed in 1926.)

Added: The point is not that the float should be in the middle of a paragraph. The float is at a predetermined position on the page. The point is instead that that could be in the middle of a paragraph.

Answer 1

This modifies LaTeX's top float positioning so that it puts the top floats in the centre of the page, or at least as close to the centre as possible, if the text flow has a an unbreakable box or math display at the centre the vsplit will not split it at exactly the centre. It's not extensively tested but it works on this page:-). It applies to all top floats in the document.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{kantlipsum}


\makeatletter

\def \@cflt{%
    \let \@elt \@comflelt
    \setbox\@tempboxa \vbox{}%
    \@toplist
\setbox\z@\vsplit\@outputbox to 0.5\ht\@outputbox
    \setbox\@outputbox \vbox{%
                             \boxmaxdepth \maxdepth
                             \unvbox\z@
                             \vskip .5\textfloatsep
                             \unvbox\@tempboxa
                             \vskip -\floatsep
                             \topfigrule
                             \vskip .5\textfloatsep
                             \unvbox\@outputbox
                             }%
    \let\@elt\relax
    \xdef\@freelist{\@freelist\@toplist}%
    \global\let\@toplist\@empty
}

\makeatother

\begin{document}
\kant[1-5]

\begin{figure}[t]

\rule{3cm}{6cm}

\caption{a rectangle}
\end{figure}

\kant[2-7]

\end{document}

Answer 2

Something more like this?

The White Rabbit will always appear on page 2 in the centre of the page scaled to 37.5% of \textheight, taking 40% total including a little breathing room. Other pages are formatted much as usual:

This uses flowfram. This drastically changes the way TeX outputs text and may not suit your purposes depending on the other content of your document.

Caveat emptor.

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{flowfram, kantlipsum, graphicx}
\newflowframe*[ 1,>2 ]{ \textwidth }{ \textheight }{ 0pt }{ 0pt }[ mainflowframe ]
\newflowframe*[ 2 ]{ \textwidth }{ .3\textheight }{ 0pt }{ .7\textheight }[ secondflow ]
\newstaticframe*[ 2 ]{ \textwidth }{ .4\textheight }{ 0pt }{ .3\textheight }[ myflowfram ]
\newflowframe*[ 2 ]{ \textwidth }{ .3\textheight }{ 0pt }{ 0pt }[ firstflow ]
\setstaticcontents*{ myflowfram }{\centering\includegraphics[height=.375\textheight]{i019}\par}
\setallflowframes{ border=none }
\setallstaticframes{ border=none }

\begin{document}
\kant[1-20]
\end{document}

Answer 3

Using the insbox set of generic macros, it reduces to using the \InsertBoxC command if there is no caption. This command can be used anywhere in a paragraph: at the point of insertion, the macro first ends the line with the following text, then inserts what you want to insert, and ends with the rest of the paragraph.

If there is caption is more mysterious to me; using captionofafter \InsertBoxC has the effect that the line is not ended, and the rest of the paragraph appears as a new paragraph after the inserted box.

However there is a workaround: put the whole (\includegraphics and \captionof) in a tabular environment, \captionof being inside a \parbox. So here is a code that seems to produce what the O.P. requires:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{cleveref,color}
\input{insbox}
\usepackage{cleveref}

\begin{document}

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec varius dapibus metus eget ultrices.
Nulla sagittis mauris rutrum, blandit augue eget, laoreet augue. Phasellus enim odio, sagittis in
mi sed, fringilla mollis odio. Phasellus quis purus ultricies, tempor purus at, tempus quam.%[height = 5cm]
Donec ultricies, ligula ac pretium porttitor, nibh nunc % <- command inserted here
\InsertBoxC{\begin{tabular}{c}\\\includegraphics{AliceSteadman.png}\\ \parbox{\linewidth}{\captionof{figure}{Any description}\label{WhiteRabbit}}\end{tabular}}%
Integer eros nibh, cursus at est sed, volutpat tristique justo. Donec ornare facilisis lorem, id
feugiat elit pellentesque at. Nulla odio mauris, luctus sed faucibus id, dignissim dictum velit.
Morbi vehicula velit at massa tristique rhoncus. Donec id ipsum molestie, pharetra augue sed,
rhoncus ligula. Cf.  \textcolor{red}{\cref{WhiteRabbit}}.

\end{document} 

Answer 4

The float package will do this. Use the [H] option for the float.

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{tikz}

\begin{document}

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Donec varius dapibus metus eget ultrices. 
Nulla sagittis mauris rutrum, blandit augue eget, laoreet augue. Phasellus enim odio, sagittis in 
mi sed, fringilla mollis odio. Phasellus quis purus ultricies, tempor purus at, tempus quam. 
Donec ultricies, ligula ac pretium porttitor, nibh nunc 
\begin{figure}[H]
    \begin{tikzpicture}
        \draw (0,0) rectangle (10,10);
    \end{tikzpicture}
\end{figure}\noindent
accumsan neque, eget lacinia lacus massa eu leo. 
Integer eros nibh, cursus at est sed, volutpat tristique justo. Donec ornare facilisis lorem, id 
feugiat elit pellentesque at. Nulla odio mauris, luctus sed faucibus id, dignissim dictum velit. 
Morbi vehicula velit at massa tristique rhoncus. Donec id ipsum molestie, pharetra augue sed, 
rhoncus ligula. Proin eros orci, tristique lobortis lobortis non, gravida sit amet magna. 

\end{document}