Framed text with a float in it

Question

I'd like to frame the text between \startfoo and \stopfoo, but there is a float in it.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}

\startfoo

\begin{figure}[h]
some float with a \caption{...}
\end{figure}

\stopfoo
\end{document}

I've thought of using fancybox:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\begin{document}

\begin{Sbox}
\begin{minipage}{\hsize}
\begin{figure}[h]
some float with a \caption{...}
\end{figure}
\end{minipage}
\end{Sbox}

\fbox{\TheSbox}
\end{document}

But this breaks due to the float inside the minipage, right? What can I do? The markup is fixed, I can't change it without very much labor.

Answer 1

You need to redefine the float environment then if you don't want to change the code of the content. The frame can be added by the mdframed package (or if you don't need to support page breaks also by my adjustbox package: \begin{adjustbox}{fbox} <content> \end{adjustbox}).

\documentclass{article}

%\usepackage{capt-of}% or caption
\usepackage{mdframed}

\let\origfigure\figure
\let\endorigfigure\endfigure

\makeatletter
\newenvironment{figurehere}[1][]{%
   \center
   \def\@captype{figure}%  see note below
}{%
   \endcenter%
}

\newcommand{\startfoo}{%
    \par\medskip
    \begin{mdframed}[linewidth=1pt]%
    \let\figure\figurehere
    \let\endfigure\endfigurehere
    \ignorespaces
}
\newcommand{\stopfoo}{%
    \unskip
    \end{mdframed}%
    \par\medskip
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
text before text before text before text before

\startfoo

text at begin of framed box
text at begin of framed box
text at begin of framed box

\begin{figure}[h]
some float with a \caption{...}
\end{figure}

text at end of framed box
text at end of framed box
text at end of framed box

\stopfoo

text after text after text after text after text after

\end{document}

Note that is NEVER a good idea to use {figure}[h] (or [H], [h!]). It is against the float concept. Always use an environment like center with \captionof instead.

In this case it is not possible to redefine \caption like \def\caption{\captionof{figure}}, because \captionof is \def\@captype{#1}\caption and would call itself then. Instead I directly set \@captype to figure and so the normal \caption can be used.

Answer 2

If all you're trying to achieve is to place a framebox around a float (but not its caption), you could use the float package and issue the following instructions in the preamble:

\usepackage{float}
\floatstyle{boxed}
\restylefloat{figure}

and later on you can create figures as usual.