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I'm looking to have a page full of text, with an embedded image aligned left, another embedded image aligned right, the two images not necessarily at the same height.

Here is an image showing the sort of thing I mean.

enter image description here

I freely recognise that this is probably stupidly simple and that I've missed the obvious, and I apologise in advance if that's the case. I thought this would be a simple question, but I've been searching for some time, and my search-fu has failed me entirely. I have a poor solution in LaTeX, but it is heavily restricted, and I'm hoping that perhaps plain TeX will let me do what I'm after. I would normally include all the things I've tried looking for, but there are too many, and it's now all a fog.

I'm using absolutely vanilla TeX on Ubuntu 14 (soon to be upgraded through 16 to 18).

Thanks in advance.

David Carlisle
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RiderOfGiraffes
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1 Answers1

7

This is assuming pdftex for the image inclusion but otherwise is just using the \parshape tex primitive to specify the cutouts.

\parshape takes a list of pairs, left indent and length of line segment.

enter image description here


\def\z{one two three four five six seven eight nine ten elevel twelve}
\def\zz{Red \z. Green yellow \z. Blue black orange\z}
\def\zzz{\zz. \zz. \zz}

\parshape 29
0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize 0pt \hsize  0pt \hsize
.3\hsize .7\hsize .3\hsize .7\hsize .3\hsize .7\hsize .3\hsize .7\hsize .3\hsize .7\hsize 
.3\hsize .7\hsize .3\hsize .7\hsize 
.3\hsize .4\hsize .3\hsize .4\hsize .3\hsize .4\hsize 
0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 
0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 0pt .7\hsize 
0pt \hsize
\noindent
\hbox to 0pt{\vbox to 0pt{%
\vskip6\baselineskip
\pdfximage  width .25\hsize{man.png}
\pdfrefximage\pdflastximage
\vss}\hss}%
\hbox to 0pt{\hskip.75\hsize
\vbox to 0pt{%
\vskip14\baselineskip
\pdfximage  width .25\hsize{man2.png}
\pdfrefximage\pdflastximage
\vss}\hss}%
\indent
\zzz. \zz. \zzz. \zz. \zzz. \zz.
\zzz. \zzz. 

\bye
David Carlisle
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  • Thanks for the reply ... I've copied the text, but I'm getting "Undefined control sequence." for \pdfximage ... – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:13
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    @RiderOfGiraffes as I said, I assumed pdftex. You gave no indication of which tex engine you were using, and pdftex is by far the most common. What are you using? – David Carlisle Feb 05 '20 at 22:16
  • @RiderOfGiraffes if you are using luatex or xetex for example, equivalent image inclusion commands exist, one of the benefits of using latex is that it can hide these difference behind a common i\includegraphics interface, but you asked for plain TeX. – David Carlisle Feb 05 '20 at 22:29
  • Sorry, it wasn't clear to me that the statement about "pdftex" was critical. I'm just typing "tex " on the command line. (a) How can I find out what engine that is? (b) What command would you recommend I use instead? I'm on vanilla Ubuntu 14.04. – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:45
  • I asked for plain text because my extensive attempts to use LaTex for this have failed. It seems to be impossible to have images offset but overlapping in vertical placement. If you can tell me how to get images in LaTex without them requiring paragraphs all to themselves, and with vertical placement overlap, then that would also be useful (although not for this specific task). ... and thank you. – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:46
  • Using pdftex has worked! I now have to play with the placements and size of cutouts, but I can do that. – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:47
  • @RiderOfGiraffes oh it would be easier and more portable in latex but this is a plain tex question now:-) (well the cutout part would be the same but image inclusion is easier.) – David Carlisle Feb 05 '20 at 22:49
  • Two things. (a) How in LaTeX can I get this effect as per the example layout I gave in the question? And (b) Should we move this to chat, as is being suggested to me? – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:51
  • if you put \documentclass{article}\begin{document} at the top of the file, and replace \bye at the end by \end{document} then the above would work in pdflatex. – David Carlisle Feb 05 '20 at 22:53
  • It does. OK, I need to start afresh asking the different question. I want a TeX or LaTex document where I can get images that overlap in vertical placement. Ideally I'd like them to float to position, but that appears to be impossible in LaTex, so I've resigned myself to doing it "by hand". If someone can show me how to float images into place as per the example layout I'd be very grateful. – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 22:58
  • the site format really doesn't work if you ask new questions in comments. New questions should be asked as well new questions. But you would need to define "float" and "into place" in any question, what causes the images to go to those lines and overlap as opposed to say coming after the paragraph. @RiderOfGiraffes – David Carlisle Feb 05 '20 at 23:09
  • I'll ask a new question ... I need to take time to phrase it properly. This solution (thanks again) will work, but there has to be a better way to accomplish my end goal. Previous attempts at asking the question have left people saying "Nope, can't do that." But I'll try again. – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 05 '20 at 23:16
  • New question asked: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/527282/getting-text-to-flow-around-images-in-either-tex-or-latex – RiderOfGiraffes Feb 06 '20 at 18:10
  • @RiderOfGiraffes actually I think you just asked the same question again, as I was just writing there before I saw your comment here. – David Carlisle Feb 06 '20 at 19:39