Is it possible to write functions in latex for figure positioning?

[steem84]

Hello,

I was wondering if it is possible to write functions in Latex to place figures in a constant way during the whole document. What I had in mind is to do it in 'a matlab way', for example:

In the document itself, you could call the function and specify the figures and the caption like this:

placefigures{cow.png,duck.png,animals}

and below the whole document, or maybe in another file, the function:

function placefigures{figure1,figure2,caption}
\begin{figure}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\textwidth]{figures/figure1}
\end{minipage}
%\hspace{0.05\textwidth}
\begin{minipage}[b]{0.5\textwidth}
\includegraphics[width=0.95\textwidth]{figures/figure2}
\end{minipage}
\caption{figcaption}
\end{figure}

In this way it would be possible to change only one number if you would change your figure positioning during the whole document.

Is something like possible?

Regards,

Steven

[nbo10]

Look into LaTeX macros. They should work with figures.

[steem84]

Thanks for the answer, but I'm quite a newbe in Latex so I'm affraid I need more help. Is it possible to define a value to a command, so that you can later use it to scale all the pictures in the same way? I mean something like this:

\newcommand{\figurewidth}{0.4}

and then later, in the figure enviroment

\begin{figure}
\includegraphics[width=\figurewidth]{figures/figure1}
\end{figure}