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Automatic float placement in multi-column documents

Multi-column layout with horizontal scrolling has a number of advantages over the standard model (single column with vertical scrolling) for on-line document layout. However, one difficulty with the multi-column model is the need for good automatic placement of floating figures. We identify reasonable aesthetic criteria for their placement, and then give a dynamic-programming-like algorithm for finding an optimal layout with respect to these criteria. We also investigate an A* based approach and give two variants differing in the choice of heuristic. We find that one of the A* based approaches is faster than the dynamic programming approach and, if a "window" of optimization is used, fast enough for moderately sized documents.