Paul,

 > What about a simplistic solution, in which you have a flag to 1) change
 > regardless of floats - it's your problem or 2) not change if floats are
 > present?  After all, you, the writer are putting out floats.  They don't
 > come from the Land of Floats.  If you want to change dimensions, you either
 > set the flag to force dimensional change or you don't put out the floats.
 > As I say, simplistic. 

that is an approach and it may solve some problems but not the problem that
this OR is intending to tackle and resolve: multicolumn layout with flexible
float handling

so using an interface that says "don't do that then" isn't really what I'm
looking for

frank