figure and
table are designed to float, and will always have
the potential to appear away from where you asked for them. Therefore
you have to find a means of getting the caption and other effects
without allowing the figure or table to float.
The most straightforward way is to use one of the float or
here packages; they give you a [H] float placement
option that prevents floating:
\begin{figure}[H]
\centering
\includegraphics{foo}
\caption{caption text}
\label{fig:nonfloat}
\end{figure}
As the example shows, these [H] figures (and correspondingly,
tables) offer all you need to cross-reference as well as typeset.
\begin{center}
\includegraphics{foo}
\captionof{figure}{caption text}
\label{fig:nonfloat}
\end{center}
which relies on the \captionof command to place a caption in
ordinary running text. That command may be had from the extremely
simple-minded package capt-of or from the highly
sophisticated caption package.
\vbox’ errors.
A further problem is the possibility that such “fixed floats” will
overtake “real floats”, so that the numbers of figures will be out
of order: figure 6 could be on page 12, while figure 5 had floated to
page 13. It’s best, therefore, either to stay with floating figures
throughout a document, or to use fixed figures throughout.
If it’s really impossible to follow that counsel of perfection, you
can use the perpage package’s command \MakeSorted
command:
...
\usepackage{float}
\usepackage{perpage}
\MakeSorted{figure}
\MakeSorted{table}
...
and the sequence of float numbers is all correct.
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=figurehere