I have concluded that the package float
allows figures to float within the section they belong to. However for one particular section I need to restrict the floating to the subsection (without forcing the exact location).
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Floats,_Figures_and_Captions#Custom_Floats I think this is the description of what I need, but I can't work further with it.
outer counter - the presence of this parameter indicates that the counter associated with this new float should depend on outer counter, for example 'chapter'.
I need to set that outer counter to be subsection rather than section which is the default. however I only need that for one specific section. Everywhere else floats can float...
Seeing this:
\newfloat{type}{placement}{ext}[outer counter]
I have tried and replaced figure
for figuresubsec
on the cases I needed and used this:
\newfloat{figuresubsec}{htbp}{floats-ext}[subsection]
however the pictures do appear but don't move to their subsection and they don't appear in the list of figures.