I'm currently writing my (150 pages so far) doctoral thesis in LaTeX. The "flafter" package helps somewhat with the placement of floats, but generally if you pu

I'm currently writing my (150 pages so far) doctoral thesis in LaTeX. The "flafter" package helps somewhat with the placement of floats, but generally if you put your float definitions where you refer to them it does the "most sensible" job. It is after all having to place floats at the top and bottom of the page only, or if necessary on a whole separate float-only page, while using no more than \topfraction of each page at the top, \bottomfraction of each page at the bottom, and ensuring there is at least \textfraction of each page left to text. The default values of these variables are a little too restrictive, so one of the first things I do is redefine them, which allows LaTeX to put the floats in more sensible positions.