placing a figure acrossed both columns in a 2 col. format 

Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Date: 1997/03/03

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&selm=331ADBC5.2781%40ab00.larc.nasa.gov

> : I would like to
> : include an encapusulated postscript file (which is a
> : figure) across both columns, as shown below.
>
> \begin{figure*}...\end{figure*}

just beware you might need play with float specifiers, etc. to get the order of the figures to be correct (e.g., figure 4 appears before figure 5). the double-column floats and the single-column floats are not "linked" as far as placement is concerned.

bil