[texhax] How to align paragraphs on verso with paragraphs on facing recto page?

[Matthew Leingang]

On Dec 14, 2007, at 6:19 AM, Niall Mansfield wrote:

> How can I align paragraphs on the verso with paragraphs on the
> facing recto page, like this:
>
>           verso               recto
>     +------------------+------------------+
>     | one one one on-  | 1111111 1111     |
>     | e one one one    | 1111 1111 1111   |
>     |                  | 1111             |
>     |                  |                  |
>     | two two two tw-  | 222              |
>     | o two two two    |                  |
>     | two              |                  |
>     |                  |                  |
>     | three three th-  | 3333333 33333 33 |
>     | ree three three  | 333 3333 3333 33 |
>     |                  | 333333 3333 3333 |
>     |                  | 333 33333 333333 |
>     |                  |                  |
>     | four four four   | 444 4444         |
>     | four             |                  |
>     +------------------+------------------+

Greetings,

That is an interesting problem.  Here's why it's hard:  TeX parses  
the input as a single stream of tokens.  It basically converts the  
tokens into words, words into lines, then lines into  pages.  At the  
end of each page it forgets everything and starts over with a new page.

If you wanted your two columns to be on the same page, then I would  
use a table, kind of like old-school HTML hacks.  The array package  
would extend the tabular environment enough to get what you wanted.

But on different pages?  You would need to alter TeX to ship out two  
pages at a time instead of its usual one.  As well as remember the  
heights of each paragraph.  And how would it decide where to place  
the page breaks?

Sorry to be unhelpful, but the problem gives me a popsicle headache.

--Matt

--
Matthew Leingang
Preceptor in Mathematics
Harvard University

http://www.math.harvard.edu/~leingang/vCard.vcf