UK TeX FAQ -- question label dpfloat

### Facing floats on 2-page spread

If a pair of floats need to be forced to form a 2-page spread (in a book, or whatever), the first must lie on the left side of the spread, on an even-numbered page. The dpfloat package provides for this: the construction to use is:

>     \begin{figure}[p]
>       \begin{leftfullpage}
>         <left side figure>
>       \end{leftfullpage}
>     \end{figure}
>     \begin{figure}[p]
>       \begin{fullpage}
>         <right side figure>
>       \end{fullpage}
>     \end{figure}

The construction has no effect on documents with class option `oneside` (`twoside` is the default for book class).

A special case of this requirement places the caption for a float on the next page. (This is useful if you have a float that “only just” fits the page.) You can (with a certain amount of twiddling) make this work with dpfloat, but the fltpage package is specially designed for the job:

>     \documentclass[twoside]{article}
>     \usepackage[leftFloats]{fltpage}
>     \begin{document}
>     ...
>     \begin{FPfigure}
>       \includegraphics{my-huge-figure}
>       \caption{Whew!  That was a big one!}
>     \end{FPfigure}
>     ...
>     \end{document}

That example should produce a caption

> Figure <n> (facing page): Whew! …

(Note, however, that the package is an old one, and declares itself to be a beta release, and contains no valid licence statement so that it is not in TeX Live. It seems to work, but…)

A alternative route is the “continued” mechanism of the caption package. The `\``ContinuedFloat` macro makes a small tweak to the next `\``caption` command, so that the command makes no increment to the caption number. This does not (of course) have any effect on actual placement of the float, but it makes the caption texts read ‘sensibly’:

>     \begin{table}
>       \caption{A table}
>       ...
>     \end{table}
>     ...
>     \begin{table}\ContinuedFloat
>       \caption{A table (cont.)}
>       ...
>     \end{table}

which would produce:

> Table 3: A table \dots Table 3: A table (cont.)

`caption.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/caption (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`dpfloat.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/dpfloat (or browse the directory); catalogue entry
`fltpage.sty`
  macros/latex/contrib/fltpage (or browse the directory); catalogue entry

This answer last edited: 2013-02-01

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