Bug#100682: Environment "figure" generates sometimes a blank line

["C.M. Connelly" <c@eskimo.com>]

Eugen,

What you've reported isn't a bug (at least not one that will ever
be fixed in LaTeX 2e), but relates to the length of your sample
line (and, probably, the length of the line in your original
document) and the placement of the figure environment.

If you add or remove some text from the end of your first
paragraph, you will find that the paragraph will break with no
blank line as you would expect.

You can also eliminate the blank line in the typeset output by
adding a blank line between the end of the paragraph preceding the
figure environment and the ``\begin{figure}'' line in your source:

   [...]
   foo bar baz.

   \begin{figure}
   [...]

Because figures are floats, and aren't necessarily typeset where
they appear, there's no need to connect them to specific blocks of
text.  LaTeX interprets more than one blank line in the same way
it interprets one blank line -- as a paragraph break -- so there's
no worries there, either.

The ``bug'' here depends on whether you think LaTeX should need
the extra blank line between the paragraph and the figure
environment to get things right.  You could make a strong argument
that LaTeX should do the right thing regardless, but that argument
is unlikely to convince the LaTeX maintainers, who are
concentrating on long-term changes to the LaTeX system and only
fix the most diabolical bugs.


I have a stylistic question for you, however: Why do you feel you
need the a4wide package?  Generally speaking, the reason people
use LaTeX is that they want high-quality typesetting combined with
the ability to abstract the appearance of their documents from the
content of those documents.  Appearance issues are left to LaTeX;
you tinker with them -- if you must -- once your content is
complete.

If the text block seems too narrow to you, it's probably because
you've spent too much time working with documents produced with
wordprocessors.  Most such documents have line widths that are
*too wide* -- people have more difficulty reading such text,
especially at smaller type sizes.  Thus the proliferation of
wordprocessed documents set in 12 pt Times Roman with ragged right
margins.

LaTeX's basic document classes have been designed to use a text
block that is optimized for particular type sizes (thus the 10pt,
11pt, 12pt, etc., document-class options).  LaTeX's basic type
size is 10 pts, which is generally very readable.

I suggest you try removing the 11pt document-class option and the
a4wide package from your document, and work with it in the format
LaTeX produces for a while.  I suspect that you will, with time
and experience, grow to appreciate the niceties of LaTeX's
document designs (not that I think they're perfect).  If you still
think you're wasting too much space, try the ``twocolumn''
document-class option, which will retain the short line widths
while using more of the page for type.


Please note that I haven't closed this bug yet -- I wanted to
provide you with some feedback and give you a chance to experiment
and consider before I do so.

   CMC

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   C.M. Connelly               c@eskimo.com                   SHC, DS
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