How to place floats between paragraphs?

Question

I have read multiple questions on this site like How to influence the position of float environments like figure and table in LaTeX? and it seems to me that default behaviour of floats is not what I need.

The behaviour that I would like: If there is eneough space left on the page -> place float where it is called. Start the next paragraph after the float. Else place it in queue and check after every following paragraph -> if float can be placed there -> do it.

What float actually does is either splits some paragraph (on page breaks) leaving single last word of paragraph after the float or it waits for a long time skipping spots where the float would have fitted nicely between paragraphs.

Is there any package or tool that does what I want - simply place figures and tables between paragraphs as soon as there is place left on that page?

I understand that float might not be the correct term as this behaviour might be called by other name, but what is it?

Answer 1

Something like this, the command \flushhere if placed between paragraphs tries to take a float off the deferred list and make it a here float at this point, if it succeeds it tries to pop the next deferred float and so on until it runs out.

So if you use [hp] floats between paragraphs and put \flushhere after subsequent paragraphs, any floats that didn't get placed "here" should be flushed out between paragraphs...

Only tested in this file, I probably missed something...

\documentclass{article}


\setcounter{totalnumber}{30}% lots of here floats

\def\a{One two \stepcounter{enumi}\roman{enumi} three four five six. }
\def\b{\a\a  red \stepcounter{enumi}\roman{enumi} red green yellow 
random longer typesetting expressions that might invoke hyphenation. }
\def\c{\a\b\a\a\b\b\a}

\def\f#1{\begin{figure}[hp]\centering\rule{2cm}{1cm}\par\caption{ff: #1}\end{figure}}
\def\t#1{\begin{table}[hp]\centering\caption{tt: #1}\par\bigskip\begin{tabular}{cc}1&2\\33&44\\555&666\end{tabular}\end{table}}

\makeatletter
\def\flushhere{\par{%
 \let\s@deferlist\@deferlist
 \let\@currbox\relax
\@next\@currbox\@deferlist{%
  \ifodd\count\@currbox
\typeout{Trying \meaning\@currbox (\number\@currbox/\the\count\@currbox),
        adding to \meaning\@currlist}%
    \@cons\@currlist\@currbox
\typeout{added: to \meaning\@currlist}%
\typeout{deferlist was \s@deferlist, now \@deferlist}%
\let\s@@deferlist\@deferlist\@empty
\global\let\@deferlist\@empty
    \@floatpenalty -\@Miii
      \penalty -\@Miv
      \@tempdima\prevdepth
      \vbox{}%
      \prevdepth\@tempdima
      \penalty\@floatpenalty
       \@@par
   \ifx\@deferlist\@empty
\typeout{float placed here}%
\global\let\@deferlist\s@@deferlist
   \flushhere
\else
\typeout{float not placed here}%
\global\let\@deferlist\s@deferlist
\fi
    \else
\typeout{not h}%
    \global\let\@deferlist\s@deferlist
    \fi
   }%
  {%
\typeout{no pending float}%
}\par}}

\makeatother

%\let\flushhere\relax

\begin{document}

AA \c \verb|\t{a}\f{a}|

\t{a}\f{a}

BB \c\b \verb|\t{b}\t{c}|

\t{b}\t{c}

BB2 \b \verb|\f{b}\f{c}|

\flushhere

\f{b}\f{c}

CC2 \a

\flushhere

CC \c \verb|\t{d}|

\flushhere
\t{d}

DD \c

\typeout{before DD2}
\flushhere

DD2 \c

\flushhere
\f{d}

EE \c

\typeout{before FF}
\flushhere

FF \c\b 

%\flushhere

\end{document}