In early version we got a coplain that \unpenality is not allowed in vertical mode from the following code.
When an item is encountered it calls \makelabe to create the label.
Commands \setbox...= box{...} might produce extra spaces because of the \par\leavevmode, an undesirable phenomena for framed pictures. Since boxes are in any case a problem for us for standard text, we are probably better-off deal properly at least with pictures.