latex, multicol, figure*

Question

I am using the multicol package, with two columns, and need a figure to span both columns. I am aware of \begin{figure*}, but I do not want the figure to float. I have been googling for about an hour, to no avail. Any help would be great.

Answer 1

Well, floating figures in LaTeX can be challenging... But as far as I remember, the core of it is that a figure always is floating and there is no way to change that other than not using a figure but includegraphics directly.

Having that said, chapter 9 "Floating tables and figures" in "Guide to LaTeX" mentions some things that might help you (listed in order mentioned):

\suppressfloats
package flafter
package float
package here
package floatflt

Answer 2

Have a look at the package nonfloat (it is part of TeXlive so there is a good chance you already have it). The following example taken from the manual of nonfloat shows how you can have a non-floating figure with caption:

\begin{minipage}{\linewidth} 
\centering% 
\includegraphics[width=0.8\linewidth,clip=]{input.eps}% 
\figcaption{Caption}% 
\label{fig:input.eps}% 
\end{minipage}

The nonfloat package provides the \figcaption command that can be used outside floats. In order to combine this with multicol I think you have to \end{multicols}, put the figure, and then \begin{multicols}{2}.

Answer 3

Not completely off-topic, http://www.deesaster.org/latex-magazinerstellung.php has an example article showing how to make magazines with latex (see the example LaTeX-Magazinerstellung-Artikel.pdf) which uses multicol and has pictures spanning more than one column. This, I think, is interesting, unfortunately the source code and guide are in German, but I think he does it with a \parbox ...