Dear list, I'm now using 1.3.1CVS and I worked out the problem with my document.
A figure float, which was on its own line in the document, came before a "Description" environment. For whatever reason, the float was also in that environment although it wouldn't have been deliberate. So everything goes horribly wrong during the LaTeX run and I'm scratching my head. Obviously changing the environment to "Standard" fixed it. Can we include basic checking for this? I would think that automatically resetting the environment of floats on their own line would be helpful. Or at least some warning that makes sense. Darren
