Lars Hellström wrote:
>
> Michael J. Downes wrote:
> >There is a related kind of justification problem that is used in AMS
> >publications: if a figure caption is less than one line in length,
> >center it, otherwise use block justification:
> >
> >  |-----------------------------------------------------------|
> >                  Figure 1. A short caption
> >
> >
> >  |-----------------------------------------------------------|
> >  Figure 2.  On the other hand  if there is  a long caption the
> >  first line  should not be centered,  the whole caption should
> >  be full-justified like this.
> >
> >This is hard to handle by only declarative parameter settings. At some
> >level it is necessary to program a test for the length of the text.
>
> No, it isn't. It is sufficient to first try the Figure 2 layout, then count
> how many lines it broke into (using \prevgraf),

With \looseness-1 I would add...

>                                                 and set it again in the
> Figure 1 layout if it turned out to be a single line. With this
> implementation, your are probably better off with a declarative interface,
> as you can then have a template do all the fiddling with linebreaking
> parameters (you'd probably want a large \linepenalty, for example).
>
> Lars Hellström


        Jean-François Mertens.