Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!ruunsa!nboogaar
From: nboogaar@ruunsa.fys.ruu.nl (Martin v.d. Boogaard)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Latex figure captions
Message-ID: <832@ruunsa.fys.ruu.nl>
Date: 27 Feb 90 10:38:52 GMT
References: <3186@sunspot.cme.nist.gov>
Organization: University of Utrecht, Dept. of Physics
Lines: 42

anderson@cme.nist.gov (William E. Anderson) writes:

>We would like to produce figure captions that are in a smaller font
>than the rest of the text.  Doing things like:

>   \caption[]{\small .....}

>produces a small font but with a normal interline spacing.  We have
>tried to redefine \makecaption with no success.  Does anyone have a
>suggestion? 

Yes, I use the following lengths + macro:

% dimensions for indented figure captions
%
\newlength{\captwidth}
\setlength{\captwidth}{0.7\textwidth}
\newlength{\captindent}
\setlength{\captindent}{0.15\textwidth}
%
% \capt generates caption with label, typeset in smaller font and with a
%       smaller width than textwidth. This width is set above.
\newcommand{\capt}[2]{\hspace*{\captindent}
                      \begin{minipage}{\captwidth}
                        \let\normalsize=\footnotesize
                        \caption[]{#2}
                        \label{#1}
                      \end{minipage}}

It does more than just changing the font size: the caption is only 0.7 times
the textwidth and \capt accepts a label as its first argument. Modify it to
fot your needs.


Martin J. van den Boogaard          
                                        
Dept. of Atomic & Interface Physics, Rijksuniversiteit, Utrecht

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