Re: Newspaper-like flowing columns?

[Mark Summerfield]

On Thursday 08 November 2001 22:11, Jeff Kingston wrote:
> On Thu, 8 Nov 2001 21:44:17 +0000, Mark Summerfield wrote:
>   > Is it possible to have newspaper-like flowing columns in lout?
>   >
>   > +----page 1 ----+
>   >
>   > |item 1 | item 2|
>   > |item 1 | item 2|
>   > |item 3 | item 2|
>   > |item 3 | item 4|
>   >
>   > +---------------+
>   >
>   > +----page 2 ----+
>   >
>   > |item 5 | item 2|
>   > |item 5 | item 2|
>   > |item 5 | item 4|
>   > |item 1 | item 4|
>   >
>   > +---------------+
>   >
>   > Would it be possible to create a package like doc or book that did
>   > this?
>
> There are two main problems.
>
> First, flowing items are galleys, and galleys have to have constant
> width throughout.  So 'item 1' would have to be the same width wherever
> it appears.
>
> Second, the places where items appear are galley targets, and these
> have to be placed onto pages.  You can't place them in the body text
> of the document, because of the rule that says that targets don't get
> promoted, so you have to place them inside the sequence of pages that
> becomes the final document (the root galley).  For the example above
> you are looking at a root galley something like this:
>
>    8c @Wide { @ItemOnePlace // @ItemThreePlace } || 8c @Wide { ... }
>    //
>    8c @Wide { @ItemFivePlace // @ItemOnePlace } || 8c @Wide { ... }
>
> where @ItemOnePlace is the target of galley @ItemOne, etc.  This
> assumes that you want to lay the items onto pages manually, and in
> various ways it's only a sketch.  But it shows what you have to aim
> at.  It would be quite a big job to package this up.

I don't think that having the columns the same width is any real
limitation, since that's common in practice for newspapers and
magazines. Manual placement is no problem either, because in such
publications each page is separate design in its own right. Of course
pages are a little more complicated than I originally intimated, e.g.

+----page 1 ----+
|item 1 | item 2|
|item 1+---+em 2|
|item 3|pic|em 2|
|item 3+---+em 4|
+---------------+

So maybe this is too hard?

The essence of what I think is needed is to be able to mark up a set
of individual pages as tables, but to flow text from a cell in one
table to a cell in a table on another page (which may be 20 pages
away). Doing this manually is possible; but painful because you'd have
to split up the text yourself which would make it a pain for
resetting.

It would be nice if the essentials were packaged. I wish I understood
lout better, but I still find the Experts guide *too* expert for me.

-- 
Mark.