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This question led to a new vesion 1.32 of paracol package.

Basically I want to use the paracol package to set bilingual texts including figures & tables, some of them should span two columns.

Figures & tables spanning one column work perfect, but with figure* and table* environments spanning two columns, the right column get corrupted. The space needed isn't considered in the right column, resulting in overlapping text with figures*|tables*

MWE, which is based on "tcolorbox Spanning Two Columns in {paracol} Environment" and paracol-man:

\documentclass[10pt,twoside,a4]{article}

\usepackage[latin,english]{babel} % proper  multilingual hyphenation
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{graphicx} % include images
\usepackage{paracol} % multilingual documents

\begin{document}\sloppypar

\begin{paracol}{2}

\lipsum[1]
\lipsum[2]
\begin{figure*}
 \def\arraystretch{0.8}
 \centerline{\begin{tabular}[b]{|c|}\hline
 \hbox to.9\textwidth{}\\ \\ \\
 double-column figure \#1\\ \\ \\
 \\\hline
 \end{tabular}}
 \caption{A Double-Column Figure}
\end{figure*}
\lipsum[3]
\lipsum[4]

\switchcolumn

\lipsum[5]
\lipsum[6]
\lipsum[7]
\lipsum[8]

\end{paracol}
\end{document}

Resulting in (top of pg 2):

top of page 2

BTW: same effect, if I'm running the MWE of "tcolorbox Spanning ..."

enter image description here

Summary: I try to understand my issue by using examples I found here, on my computer, always resulting in the same difference: in the right column, the space which should be used for star environments isn't allocated. (using LateX since 1997).

I'm using a fresh install of MiKTeX 2.9

Thanks for any answer, Marcus

Community
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Marcus Zelezny
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  • This is the expected behaviour. If you want something different, then you have to work around it. Here you can break the paracol environment to set the two-column figure, or you can line up the two columns and leave the gap manually. Either would work, but it's not clear from your example how you intend to provide bilingual content if they don't match up. – Werner Oct 08 '15 at 21:19
  • Hi Werner, the figure and the text are overlapping, which shouldn't happen. If you compare my result (of "tcolorbox Spanning") = overlapping text with the result of [link]http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/167708/tcolorbox-spanning-two-columns-in-paracol-environment 2nd page = no overlapping! – Marcus Zelezny Oct 08 '15 at 21:27
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    @Werner I think this is a bug. It works fine with TeX Live 2014 but not 2015. Should it be reported to the package maintainer, do you think? Or am I missing something? (I don't know this package at all - I just compared the 2014 and 2015 output for a test case.) – cfr Oct 08 '15 at 22:49
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    @OP What do you mean that this happens with any LaTeX from 1997 or later? – cfr Oct 08 '15 at 22:52
  • @cfr It works fine using this online compiler http://latex.informatik.uni-halle.de/latex-online/latex.php?spw=2&finit=nothing and using ShareLatex – touhami Oct 09 '15 at 06:04
  • I can confirm the current problem and also that it does not exist in March 2014 with MiKTeX. paracol is versioned as 1.31 2013-10-10. If this is correct, something paracol relied on was changed. – Thomas F. Sturm Oct 09 '15 at 06:26
  • @all: thx++ for your efforts! – Marcus Zelezny Oct 09 '15 at 09:08
  • @cfr: I also have the feeling, there is a very nasty side effect/bug. Same effects occur also with a fresh install of TexLive 2015; ad 1997: meaning I'm using Latex since 1997 (not a real newbie anymore). – Marcus Zelezny Oct 09 '15 at 09:16
  • @touhami: you are right, using latex-online, which is "TeX Live 2012/Debian" based, produces correct results. – Marcus Zelezny Oct 09 '15 at 09:18
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    internal latex commands \end@dblfloat and \@dblfloatplacement are changed since v1.2b 2015/01/11 make paracol no more compatible with new format (in this point). – touhami Oct 09 '15 at 09:23
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    @touhami: That's worth to be the answer, in my point of view! –  Oct 09 '15 at 11:14
  • @Christian Hupfer: what touhami just found (thx++ for that!) is the reason for my issue , but not the answer for my problem, how to get it working. – Marcus Zelezny Oct 09 '15 at 11:41
  • @MarcusZelezny True, but fixing a bug is really off-topic. You need to tell the package maintainer. – cfr Oct 09 '15 at 13:01
  • @all: thanks a lot for your support in identifying the real problem! I already contacted the package owner H. Nakashima. He provided my with a fix and he will provide a new version of paracol to CTAN soon. – Marcus Zelezny Oct 10 '15 at 10:30
  • @touhami Please read the answer. The package author would like to acknowledge you and is hoping you'll get in touch. – cfr Oct 10 '15 at 12:51

1 Answers1

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I'm Hiroshi Nakashima, the author of paracol. I got a message from Marcus today to know an embarrassing change in double-float processing had been made in the latest LaTeX implementation after its stable work for about 30 years to make my paracol unable to work with it. Fortunately, I could make a quick fix of the problem to have paracol v1.32 to be released soon (hopefully). I'd like to thank personally to touhami for his/her help by pointing out the change in double-float processing and its impact to paracol. I hope touhami will contact me so that I express my thanks in "Acknowledgments" of the paracol manual with his/her name.

Hiroshi Nakashima
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