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Date:         Wed, 18 Jul 90 13:07:01 CET
Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@unido.bitnet>
From: PZF5HZ@RUIPC1B.bitnet
Subject:      RE: two-column output
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
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X-Keywords:                  
X-UID: 198

I tackled exactly this problem for the texas proceeding paper.
I must say that I learned a lot and that it was much more difficult
to achieve then I had expected. Nevertheless I think this is managable
with some effort. The macros I used where tailored for the needs of
my paper so there is no use to show them arround at the moment. But
one can definitly change the output routines at the necessary places
to achieve the desired behavior.

The problem I found is that there are many many some details to be
taken care of: take for example a list. One possibilty is to
make \topsep=.5\baselineskip and set other parm to 0pt such an approach
will work fine if the list happens to fall onto one page and is
relatively short. If the list contains a pagebreak it looks much nicer
if let's say \topsep=.5\baselineskip plus 1pt and \itemsep=0pt plus 1pt
or something like that. See the problem?

There are many others and it took me about four days to get things
running but it was certainly worth the trouble.

In my opinion this is a real quality requirement which should be
(at least as a style option) available in the new LaTeX.

Frank

P.S. Of course Malcolm you're right it is EDIT look and EDIT again,
but you have to give some help otherwise it is simply a GIVE UP.