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I suppose "call out box" probably doesn't have much of a meaning in the TeX world, but a (framed) "box" probably isn't specific enough for what I mean.

Anyway, I am compiling the following with pdftex:

\documentclass[twocolumn, 11pt]{article}

\usepackage[framemethod=TikZ]{mdframed}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{newfloat}

\DeclareFloatingEnvironment[
    fileext=los,
    listname=List of Schemes,
    name=MyFloat,
    placement=t,
    within=section
]{MyFloat}

\usepackage{lipsum}

% page formating
\setlength{\parindent}{0cm}
\setlength{\parskip}{6pt plus1pt minus1pt}
\setlength{\columnsep}{12pt}
\raggedright

\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-5]

\begin{MyFloat*}
  \begin{mdframed}
      \begin{multicols}{2}

           \lipsum[6-7] 

        \end{multicols}
    \end{mdframed}
\end{MyFloat*}


\lipsum[8-9]

\end{document}

The main thing I would like to achieve is to have finer control over the paragraph formatting inside the framed box (especially, make it \raggedright and set paragraph spacing as in the rest of document).

But I also have the feeling that there are unnecessary (and bad) lines of code here, so any suggestions on this are much appreciated as well. For example:

  • note that I initially chose the whole document to be in two-column mode (I didn't find it necessary to \usepackage{multicol} at first, only when I decided to include this "call out box".).

  • do I really need a float environment here? (I just guessed it could work and it kind of did, but am not sure what the benefits are, what kind of annoyances it could bring me, and if it is needed at all.)

  • I tried a minipage myself (I guess these packages build on minipage) but didn't get very far.

In other words, I'd like to learn a bit of LaTeX as well.

djas
  • 317

0 Answers0