[texhax] \listoffigures, order of reference numbers

[Torsten Wagner]

Dear William thanks for your mail,

William Adams wrote:
> On Apr 21, 2006, at 5:04 AM, Torsten Wagner wrote:
> 
>> thanks much for your help. I was aware of the special "figure-list  
>> caption" which you can include in square brackets before the figure  
>> caption.
>> However, I just wonder that LaTeX does not take care of this effect.
>> There are four reasons why I like to solve this problem.
>>
>> 1. I do not know, but maybe my colleague get forced (some  
>> publishers still believe MS-Word invented the design-rules for a  
>> good layout ;) ) to write in the "list-of-figures" exactly the same  
>> text as in the real figure captions. If so, we have to find a  
>> solution.
> 
> I can't think of a single reference style which would advocate having  
> references show up like this --- certainly one wouldn't do it with a  
> footnote.
> 
> How Word does it is immaterial here since it doesn't do bibliographic  
> references at all --- so it's a question of how, say Endnote would  
> handle it, and I'd be willing to wager it would have similar  
> difficulties.

Please do not forget that most WORD-based articles with citations are 
not created in any way a automatic citation list. There just were typed 
one by one individual by hand. Which, is as we all know a pain if you 
like to add one more reference in the article latter on ;)

Therefore, there is no style at all.
> 
>> 2. My colleague is relatively new to LaTeX. I convinced him with  
>> the argument that he has not to take care of any reference-,  
>> caption-, section-, page- or any other number since LaTeX will do  
>> that boring job for him. If he get faced now with such a problem,  
>> he will call me a cheater. ;)
> 
> You're not cheating, you're telling LaTeX something which is  
> authorial in nature (what is appropriate for a list of figures,  
> what's correct for the text).
> 
> This does raise an interesting idea of whether or no it would be  
> desireable to write the citation macro so that instead of having two  
> versions there was a short initial part (in the square brackets)  
> which would appear in the List of Figures and whatever else was in  
> the regular brackets would be appended to that in the main appearance  
> in the text.
> 

The extended citation command could be useful and would be confirm with 
all other commands like \section, \chapter etc. which allow a similar 
behavior. However, I'm just more then puzzled that the described effect 
is only related if you include a bib-file. For individual \bibitem the 
reference numbers start correct. (As long as you agree with my 
understanding of correctness ;) ). If so, it really might be considered 
as a bug. It would be interesting to see if references in chapters and 
sections (also it is very untypical) as well as in the "list of tables" 
behave in a similar manner.


>> 3. The supervisor is hmmm... from the other side of the LaTeX vs.  
>> MS-Word war :D. If he find such a mistake, it will take months  
>> until he stop to backbite on LaTeX.
> 
> All the more reason to get it right up-front.
> 
>> 4. ... the best reason at the end. As usual I like to learn and I  
>> like to understand. Therefore, it is a pleasure to me to solve this  
>> problem ;)
> 
> I found the initial short thing to be verbose and almost suggested  
> doing it as follows:
> 
> \caption[Very important figure.]{This is the very
> important figure caption. According to \protect\cite{d} ...}
> 
> Which editing makes your list of figures read better IMO.
> 

That is what we using now. However, we will try the suggestion of Phillip.

Thanks again

Torsten