Is it possible to use the figure environment with the standalone package?

Question

I can not get standalone to work with figures; I get the error Not in outer par mode.

(The figure is in the included file.)

Answer 1

Update 2011/12/21

I now release standalone v1.0 which turns floats to non-floating environments automatically by default. Now you can use figure as normal inside standalone files. See the float option in the manual.

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Original answer:

No, floats like figure and table environments are not supported with the standalone class or by the internally used preview package. The whole file is rendered as one box and there is not place where it could float to.

Just remove the environment and include your images or pictures as normal. Place the figure environment including the \caption in the main file and \input the standalone file there:

% inside the main file
\begin{figure}
   \centering
   \input{somestandalonefile}%
   \caption{The caption text}\label{fig:abc}%
\end{figure}

If you want to have the caption inside the standalone for any reason load the caption or capt-of package and use \captionof{figure}{<caption text>}. You can put the whole thing in a center environment. However centering might not work properly in a standalone because of the cropping.

\documentclass{standalone}
\usepackage{capt-of}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
   % your image or picture code
   \captionof{figure}{The caption text}\label{fig:abc}
\end{center}
\end{document}