🚀 go-pugleaf

Trevor,
  Sounds like the problem is that the anchors for your graphics and tables are all going into the same FrameMaker paragraph. When there are multiple anchors in one paragraph, FM does display the graphics before the tables.
  You can think of the anchor as a non-printing "character" that, like all other FM content, must go into a paragraph. In a structured document in which a graphic or table element follows a container that can contain text, FM places the anchor for the graphic or table at the end of the paragraph for the container.
  A solution is to introduce a new element, which might be tagged anchor, to contain the graphic or table. Thus, your XML will become

<para> text goes here </para>
    <anchor>...
</anchor>
    <anchor><screenshot.../></anchor>

and so on.
  There are various techniques you can use to minimize or eliminate any vertical space occupied by the anchor paragraphs: setting the font size to FM's minimum 2 pts, the line spacing to 0, or the space above to a negative number. Since the space between two paragraphs is the maximum of the space below the first and that above the second, the negative space above is only effective if you also set the space below a para element that precedes an anchor to the same value.
  If you don't want the anchor elements in your archived XML documents, you can create them with XSLT before opening your documents in FM. If you are doing any editing within FM and saving the result as XML, you can use a r/w rule to unwrap the FM anchor elements.