Why is \caption*{} not working?

Question

I've been inspired by this question to add sources to captions. Basically, to define a source in a comment a new command can be created,

\newcommand{\source}[1]{\caption*{\hfill Source: {#1}} }

And it would be sufficient to add a \source{Book} to the figure environment to have a source within the figure, without it appearing in the \listoffigures.

Unfortunately, whenever I do this the following result is obtained:

The \caption* command is not well-received by LaTeX and what's inside is still somehow read and intended as a caption. Apart from the horrible artifact of "Figure 1.2: *" in the text, in the list of figures this is still recorded, with a list going like

Figure 1.1: Resistivity etc etc
Figure 1.2: *
Figure 1.3: Meaningful caption
Figure 1.4: *

And so on.

Additional info: I'm using TeXstudio 2.10.8 with a base of MikTeX 2.9.4196 on Windows 10.

MWE:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\usepackage{graphicx} %for figures
\newcommand{\source}[1]{\caption*{\hfill Source: {#1}} } %command definition for sources in figures
\begin{document}
\listoffigures
\chapter{On how my caption went wrong}
Well hello there.
\begin{figure}
    \centering
%   \includegraphics[width=0.7\linewidth]{whatevs}
    \caption{Look at me I'm a caption}
    \label{fig:preeetty_figure}
    \source{Interesting book}
\end{figure}
\end{document}

Does anybody know why this is happening? Thanks in advance!

You don't need \caption to add text in a figure environment, won't just \newcommand{\source}[1]{\hfill Source: {#1} } do the job? — Torbjørn T., May 17 '16 at 16:55
Well Torbjørn, that pretty much solved it! Thank you very much!
By the way... do you know how to close the question? I cannot mark your answer as being the correct one. — man-teiv, May 17 '16 at 16:58
Why is \caption* not working? Because the caption package isn't loaded here. And what \caption* is good for when you can simply add text to figures anyway? \caption* typesets the text as setup with \captionsetup, i.e. it is formatted as a caption, w/ vertical spaces above and below it. So it's meant as some kind of caption replacement, but not to typeset additional text beside an existing (real) caption. — , May 18 '16 at 08:09

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 17 '16 at 17:02

A figure environment can contain normal text as well, not just graphics and captions. As such, a simple way of achieving what you want is

\newcommand{\source}[1]{\hfill Source: #1} %command definition for sources in figures

Complete code:

\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{report}
\newcommand{\source}[1]{\hfill Source: {#1}} %command definition for sources in figures
\begin{document}
\listoffigures  
\begin{figure}[htb]
    \centering
    \caption{Look at me I'm a caption}
    \label{fig:preeetty_figure}
    \source{Interesting book}
\end{figure}
\begin{figure}[htb]
    \centering
    \caption{Words.}
    \label{fig:preetty_figure}
    \source{Uninteresting book}
\end{figure}

\end{document}

Why is \caption*{} not working?

1 Answers1

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