On this question, a comment by Martin H says: that one should forget about the subfigure and subfig packages and use subcaption. As subfig replaces subfigure, no argument there.
I am currently using subfig for displaying my subfigures and quite content with it. So I am wondering, what the advantages of using subcaption instead would be or if and why the use of subcaption is generally preferable to subfig.
subfig is not working properly with hyperref. The author of the caption package wrote here:
Please note that the hyperref support within the subfig package is broken. You could give my subcaption package a try instead.
Internet or Usenet search for subfig+hyperref would show compatibility and functionality issues, I guess we don't need to create an example for it here.
Do you think hyperref works properly? You write : If A does not work with B, but A works with C then B is obsolete but if B works with D and C does not work with D then what is your choice ?
Commented
Mar 16, 2011 at 16:16
hyperref. Just didn't know about this incompability yet.
Commented
Mar 17, 2011 at 11:49
Pro subcaption:
\subref* will behave like \ref* (offered by the hyperref package), \autoref will work out-of-the-box, and the caption options hypcap= and hypcapspace= will work for sub-captions, too.\ContinuedFloat offered by the caption package while the subcaption package does not.list=on etc., and offering similar commands to \caption, \captionbox, and the figure environment: \subcaption, \subcaptionbox, and the subfigure environment. (Please note that \captionbox is not avail yet but will be offered by the very next version 3.2 of the caption package.)\subcaption could be used to place a sub-caption (left or right) beside the figure.\subcaptionbox offers more optional arguments than \subfloat, e.g. for giving the box a specific width.\phantomsubcaption for referencing without having a caption. (since version 1.1 of the subcaption package)Pro subfig:
caption=false.) Because of that the subfig package could also be used with document classes which are incompatible to the caption package.\vspace command, \smallskip, \medskip, \bigskip, or similar.Please note that I'm the author of the caption & subcaption package, so this list is far from being objective ;-)
But is the use of subcaption generally preferable to subfig? IMHO no, because the subfig package is a fine (and well documented) one, and if one is contented with the subfig package there is no need to switch.
subfig determine their width automatically, while subfigure from subcaption needs the width specified.
subcaption is not compatible with RevTeX, as mentioned in this answer and this answer. This is a pretty serious bug to me, since I have no choice but to use RevTeX.
Commented
Jun 3, 2015 at 15:09
Just for documentation: In an up-to-date TeXlive 2011 installation, references to subfloats are off by one if the caption is above the subfloat (position=top). In the example below, this concerns references to subtables but not to subfigures.
\documentclass{scrartcl}
\pagestyle{empty}
\usepackage{subfig}
\captionsetup*[table]{position=top}
\captionsetup*[subtable]{position=top}
\captionsetup*[figure]{position=bottom}
\captionsetup*[subfigure]{position=bottom}
\begin{document}
\begin{figure}
\subfloat[1]{11111\label{fig:1}} \subfloat[2]{22222\label{fig:2}}
\caption{fig}\label{fig}
\end{figure}
\begin{table}
\caption{tbl}\label{tbl}
\subfloat[A]{aaaaa\label{tbl:a}} \subfloat[B]{bbbbb\label{tbl:b}}
\end{table}
Figure~\ref{fig} (\ref{fig:1}, \ref{fig:2}) and Table~\ref{tbl} (\ref{tbl:a}, \ref{tbl:b}).
\end{document}
Switching to subcaption has resolved the issues, but I wish there would be a "compatibility" option so that code that used to work with subfig works also with subcaption. (Or at least a HOWTO with a reference to \subcaptionbox.)
subfig manual (?) relates to referencing errors. The problem here is not the misaligned "a"-s and "b"-s, rather the references to the subtables (lowest line of text).
subcaption package even offered \subfloat as well (but this was never a documented feature), but it has shown that this was not a very good idea. For example the subfig package allows having the \label in its contents while the subcaption package does not. Clearing this issue and removing more subtle differences would end up in writing more code for offering a compatible \subfloat than it took for the rest of the whole subcaption package. (Therefore I decided to drop that idea.)
subfig to subcaption offered by me would have been overbearing. But since subfig is "dead" more than 7 years now I may need reconsidering this...