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<?xml version="1.0"?>

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head profile="http://dublincore.org/documents/dcq-html/">
<title>Textpos</title>
<meta name='DC.subject' content='latex, textpos, absolute positioning'/>
<meta name='DC.title' content='Textpos'/>
<meta name='DC.date' content='2006-8-24'/> <!-- 1.7 release date -->
<meta name='rcsdate' content='$Date$'/>
<link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />
<link href="http://nxg.me.uk" rev="author"/>
<link type="text/css" rel="stylesheet"
      href="style.css"/>
</head>

<body>
<h1>Textpos</h1>
<div class="abstract">
<p>Lay out text and graphics at arbitrary positions on the LaTeX
page.</p>
<p>The textpos home page is at <a href='http://purl.org/nxg/dist/textpos'
><code>http://purl.org/nxg/dist/textpos</code></a></p>
<p>Version 1.7f, 2009 May 28.</p>
</div>

<p>This package facilitates placing boxes at absolute positions on the
LaTeX page.  There are several reasons why this might be useful, but
the main one (or at least my motivating one) is to help produce a
large-format conference poster.  Other applications include placing
material within, say, figures.  Textpos is also discussed in the <a
href='http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=abspos'>TeX FAQ
entry on absolute positioning</a>.</p>

<p>This package provides a single environment, which contains the text
(or graphics, or table, or whatever) which is to be placed on the
page, and which specifies where it is to be placed.  The environment
is accompanied by various configuration commands.  See the <a
href="textpos.pdf" >manual (pdf)</a>.</p>

<p>I have a collection of general advice about <a
href="http://purl.org/nxg/note/posters" >creating
conference posters with LaTeX</a>.</p>

<p>Rolf Niepraschk provided me with a wonderful demo
(<a href="niepraschk-eso-pic.tex" >tex</a>,
<a href="niepraschk-eso-pic.pdf" >pdf</a>)
of using Textpos along with his <code>eso-pic</code> package,
and the <code>calc</code> package, to produce a grid which can help lay out
material on the page.</p>

<h3>History</h3>

<dl>
<dt>1.7f, 2009 May 28</dt>
<dd>The change in behaviour introduced in v1.7e is now documented (it
was unspecified before, and 1.7e didn't commit itself one way or the
other).</dd>

<dt>1.7e, 2009 March 29</dt>
<dd>Daniel Richard G noted that the order in which textblock contents
was laid down on the page was counter-intuitive, since one would
expect that later environments go 'on top of' earlier ones.  This
order was unspecified before this version, but I've changed this,
satisfying a principle of least surprise (later ones now go 'on
top').</dd>

<dt>1.7d, 2007 March 30</dt>
<dd>Axel Sommerfeldt suggested a further alternative approach, even more
lightweight, and I incorporated a version of that.</dd>

<dt>1.7c, 2007 March 29</dt>
<dd>Giovanni Radilla reported a problem with captions, which meant that the
captions weren't appearing properly in the list of figures.  Dan
Luecking and Axel Sommerfeldt analysed the problem precisely, and the
latter provided code which I've incorporated in this fix.</dd>

<dt>1.7b, 2007 March 21</dt>
<dd>Robert Whittaker reported a problem with <code>\TPmargin</code>,
which meant that lists and quotations (and other things which
manipulated <code>\leftskip</code> and <code>\rightskip</code>) were
not decreasing in size when you set <code>\TPmargin</code> non-zero.
Fixed.</dd>

<dt>1.7a, 2006 September 2</dt>
<dd>Version 1.7 created an inadvertant dependency on the
<code>{color}</code> package.  Now, if you do not load that package,
<code>\textblockrulecolour</code> will have no effect, rather than
failing.  Textpos will give you a warning in this case, reminding you
to load the <code>{color}</code> package.</dd>

<dt><strong>1.7, 2006 August 24</strong></dt>
<dd>Added the <code>\textblockrulecolour</code> and
<code>\TPshowboxes{true,false}</code> commands, to further control the
display of the rules around the text blocks.</dd>

<dt>1.6b, 2006 August 10</dt>
<dd>Minor documentation fixes</dd>

<dt>1.6a, 2005 October 13</dt>
<dd>The overriding of the figure and table environments now also works
when there is no previous environment to override.</dd>

<dt><strong>1.6, 2005 August 30</strong></dt>
<dd>Made <code>{calc}</code>-style dimensions to the
<code>{textblock*}</code> argument work again (so <em>that's</em> what
regression tests are for...).  Override the <code>figure</code> and
<code>table</code> environments within <code>textblock</code>
environments, to avoid their surprising and undesirable interaction
with <code>textblock</code>.</dd>

<dt>1.5b, 2005 June 13</dt>
<dd>The 1.5 release broke the textblock environment's optional
argument, controlling the position of the reference point within the
block.  Fixed.</dd>

<dt>1.5a, 2005 March 26</dt>
<dd>Documentation fixes: added a section on the
interaction between absolute mode and LaTeX's <code>\newpage</code>
command.</dd>

<dt><strong>1.5, 2005 March 23</strong></dt>
<dd>Implement <code>\TPMargin</code> command, which causes a margin
to appear round the blocks of text within textblock
environments.  This makes it easy to use blocks of colour which
are larger than the block of text by a decent margin, or to put a
border round textblocks by setting a suitably-sized margin and using
the <code>showboxes</code> package option.</dd>

<dt><strong>1.4, 2003 September 7</strong></dt>
<dd>Changes in the handling of vertical spacing; inconsistent in some
circumstances before.  Slight (consequent) change to the algorithm
which ensures that material is output in absolute mode even when the
page is otherwise empty.  See README for details.  Version 1.3a will
remain available for some time in case these fixes break things.</dd>

<dt>1.3a, 2003 June 24</dt>
<dd>Added the <code>\textblockcolour</code> command, to set
the background colour of text blocks</dd>

<dt><strong>1.3, 2003 June 24</strong></dt>
<dd>(there was a release 1.3, but it was broken, and immediately
replaced by 1.3a)</dd>

<dt>1.2b, 2002 July 1</dt>
<dd>Works around a bug present in at least one package,
which leaves box255 holding an hbox at the wrong moment</dd>

<dt>1.2a, 2002 April 28</dt>
<dd>Version 1.2 had an error, which caused a confusing error
if you gave any fractional part in the arguments to the
<code>{textblock}</code> environment.  This was fixed in version 1.2a, 
which adds a <code>{textblock*}</code> environment (fully compatible
with <code>calc</code>), and does not attempt to support calc-style
expressions in the parameters to the unstarred
<code>{textblock}</code> environment.</dd>

<dt><strong>1.2, 2002 April 21</strong></dt>
<dd>Rolf Niepraschk <code>niepraschk@ptb.de</code> provided code to
make textpos compatible with the <code>calc</code> package</dd>

<dt>Version 1.1 was released in 1999</dt>

</dl>

<h3>Installation and further information</h3>

<ol>

<li>Run LaTeX on the file <code>textpos.ins</code> -- this will
unpack the style file <code>textpos.sty</code> amongst other files.
Place this somewhere where TeX can find it.</li>

<li>Run LaTeX on the file <code>textpos.dtx</code> to obtain the
documentation.</li>
</ol>

<p>The <code>textpos</code> home page is at <a href='http://purl.org/nxg/dist/textpos'
><code>http://purl.org/nxg/dist/textpos</code></a>, and there may be more
up-to-date versions available there.</p>

<p><code>Textpos</code> is also available on CTAN:
<a href='http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/textpos/'
	>/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/textpos/</a></p>


<div class="signature">
<a href="http://nxg.me.uk" >Norman Gray</a><br />
2009 May 28
</div>

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