[OS X TeX] memoir class, Table questions, position of floats, line numbering

[Denis Chabot]

Hi,

I am working on my first document finally, using TeXShop and LaTeX. 
This is not going too badly, thanks to things I've been told before on 
this list, the sample document of  Will Robertson (thanks!), and some 
online guides I downloaded.

One first question that comes to my mind is: why does the sample 
document use the memoir class, which is not described on most LaTeX 
guides? I found a 300 p document on memoir, but before digging into it 
(it is not light reading...), I'd like to know if there are significant 
advantages over the article class which would make this a good time 
investment.

I had to make a few tables. I noticed that if you choose the Table 
macros in TeXShop, you get the elements of a Table pasted into your 
document, and the first line is:

\begin{table}[htdp]

What does the d do? I only found the description for h, t, b and p, not 
d.

To continue with Tables, is there a way to merge two cells vertically?

I had to trim the column headings quite a bit to get a table to fit 
within the width of the text. Maybe I could have reduced the font size 
(maybe this will be ugly, but I'd like to try). Is there a way to 
reduce font size for a whole table? Maybe the same technique would 
allow me to make headings of a table bold, but the rest plain, when 
journals want this style?

I found how to center headings that happened to be multicolumn, but how 
do you center a column heading when you want the remainder of the 
column to be right aligned?

Anyway, my tables worked quite well for a first attempt, but I must say 
it is slower to make a table this way versus a graphical interface.

I love not having to worry about where my figures end up (one of my 
main beef with Word). But many ended up alone on a page, when I thought 
there was enough space for a few lines of text on the same page. I have 
a very small sample size, remember, but it looks to me that text will 
be placed with my floats only if whole paragraphs can fit. Is there a 
way to have parts of paragraph accompany floats on a page, or if this a 
behavior that insures better looking document and I should not mess 
with it?

Finally, although I don't need this right now, in biology we often have 
to submit documents that have lots of space between the lines within 
paragraphs (double interligne in French). It is not pretty, but 
journals want the manuscripts that way. How would you do this? And if 
the journal also wants line numbers to appear in the left margin, can 
this be done with LaTeX?

Well, this is enough for one message. Thanks in advance to those who 
can help.

Denis Chabot

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