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This question is a result of an answer to Table captions do not appear on top in IEEETran class

As far as I remember, a long time ago the caption for a table was always in a proper position. It was independent on the relative position of \caption to the rest (generally, tabular).

Is there any chance to find this early (in my opinion: better) version somewhere?

Przemysław Scherwentke
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  • Do you mean in previous LaTeX releases? –  Oct 09 '17 at 12:42
  • Are packages allowed? – TeXnician Oct 09 '17 at 12:43
  • @ChristianHupfer Yes. And the suggestion, when the change was made, would be perfect. About 15 years ago the version in question was used. – Przemysław Scherwentke Oct 09 '17 at 12:43
  • @PrzemysławScherwentke: Well, older releases of TL are available: ftp://tug.org/historic/systems/texlive/, but I can't suggest the precise time of change. –  Oct 09 '17 at 12:46
  • @TeXnician I can write some version of it, so an additional package is not the best solution. I am rather interested in reminding, how it was obtained in some earlier version of latex.ltx (or maybe latex.tex). – Przemysław Scherwentke Oct 09 '17 at 12:47
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    See also: http://www.latex-project.org/get/#historic –  Oct 09 '17 at 12:48
  • @PrzemysławScherwentke: I found a TL5c CDROM from 2000 (which is earlier than 15 years ago) in my shelves. I can zip the latex - base directory and sent it to you (provided I have some contact address) or place it in my DropBox, enabling free download –  Oct 09 '17 at 12:58
  • @ChristianHupfer Oh, it may be a good solution, if the developers of LaTeX wont't answer here. My e-mail (or email, as Donald Knuth wants) is standard: Przemyslaw.Scherwentke@pwr.edu.pl – Przemysław Scherwentke Oct 09 '17 at 13:02
  • @PrzemysławScherwentke: Mail sent –  Oct 09 '17 at 13:13
  • You presumably mean to ask for an old version of the IEEE class, not an old version of latex (latex does not position captions at all) – David Carlisle Oct 09 '17 at 14:19

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The handling of caption has never changed in latex: the code for \caption and \@caption has literally not changed at all since we started the current svn in 2008, I didn't check back beyond that but essentially it hasn't changed since latex2.09, 30 years ago.

The caption is just set where it appears in the source file. This is really the only possibility if you allow authors to have multiple captions in the same table or position the captions to the side in minipage or other formatting rules.

Some packages and classes use a more controlled format where only one caption is allowed and it is saved by the float mechanism rather than being typeset and then positioned according to some document options. Notably any document using the float package (or a class that uses float) has the possibility of the float mechanism taking over caption positioning via that package's \restylefloat command.

But as Christian mentioned in comments, if you want to look at old copies of latex for other reasons, then http://www.latex-project.org/get/#historic has some links.

David Carlisle
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  • I suggested the historic versions only in case LaTeX is the 'culprit', but I think you're right that IEEETran is to blame about the change. –  Oct 09 '17 at 15:18
  • @ChristianHupfer yep but I was aware that my answer originally didn't answer the question as asked in the title so I added your comment again, although actually most browsers don't seem to want to follow ftp links these days.... – David Carlisle Oct 09 '17 at 15:22