Re: Independent columns through the whole document

[Jeff Kingston]

> I want to have the following: a document that contains
> two *independent* columns, where each of those columns
> is going through the whole (multi-paged) document.

> There reason for this is:
> I want to have one text as the original, layoutet in the first column.
> The second column is to be intended as a "comment-column" (or one
> also could use it as a
> column with the translation of the "original column".

> How to achieve that?  This should be easy in lout?!?

For the commentary application, see @MarginNote in the User's
Guide, somewhere near where footnotes are documented.

There is nothing in the current Lout packages which supports two
independent columns of text through the document.  You could
become an expert and modify the basic package so that the
@Text galley becomes two galleys, @TextA and @TextB, targeted
at separate columns of the page.

However there would still be an awkward technical problem to
overcome, where if you write, say,

   @TextA @Begin
   ... pages of stuff ...
   @End @TextA

   @TextB @Begin
   ... pages of stuff ...
   @End @TextB

after @TextA is added to the document, all the @TextB targets
have to remain open.  So you would need to be enough of a Lout
expert to understand the difference between ordinary galleys
and forcing galleys.  @TextA would be an ordinary galley, and
@TextB would be a forcing galley.  The whole document would
be held in memory until @TextB starts forcing pages out.  I
guess that is OK these days; it wasn't when Lout was created.

Another problem is that with translations the two columns are
not in fact independent.  Instead, they have to synchronize
at each page turn.  I've just finished a volume of Cicero with 
the Latin on the verso pages and the English translation on
the recto pages.  Latin is apparently terser than English so
you see Latin pages with wider line spacing, plus all the
(English) footnotes have been put under the Latin.  Not simple.

Jeff