[texhax] Caption spacing with \includegraphics in \figure: can I control it?

[Axel E. Retif]

On  9 Jul, 2010, at 12:08, Henry Law wrote:

> I am managing editor for a 200-page book with many imbedded JPEG images.  Until March I was working on it under Windows and now I'm continuing the work under Linux.  In each case the software used is TeXlive, emacs for editing and pdflatex for formatting.  The only difference was the level of TeXlive: 2007 before, texlive2009-20091107 now.
> 
> I formatted it yesterday and found that pagination had gone wrong, subtly but all-pervasively and disastrously: all our hard work in placing text on the pages and avoiding stray single lines has all gone to pot.
> 
> I've traced it to the appearance of a very slightly greater space now between the image and its caption: about half a vertical line I'd say. Do I have control over that?  I've tried Googling for an answer but it's hard to structure a query.

I feel for you! This is something I'm always afraid of when I change distributions, as it is my work the final preparations of books. Usually this is caused by some package changing the dimensions involved, which in this case are \abovecaptionskip and \belowcaptionskip.

If you have or can get ``The LaTeX Companion'', see section 6.5, pp. 306 ff. See also

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=destable

By the way ---but to be considered by you only for future works---, I now follow the advice to avoid \begin{center} \includegraphics{...} \end{center}, and use \centering instead, as the center environment adds extra glue space. Also, I don't see the use of \mbox in \mbox{\includegraphics...}.

Best

Axel