[tex-live] rotating column content of a two-column document

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Sun Jun 21 11:17:17 CEST 2015


A LaTeX user writes for instance

\usepackage{rotating}
...
\begin{sideways}
...
\end{sideways}

This will work the same way in pdflatex, lualatex, xelatex,
latex+dvips. If the user prepares the document in one engineč and for
some reason has to switch to another, it will still work. If the code
is written via \pdfliteral and the user has to switch to xelatex, it
will cease to work and will have to be rewritten.
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz


2015-06-21 10:18 GMT+02:00 Philip Taylor <P.Taylor at rhul.ac.uk>:
>
>
> Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
>
>> But I definitely can't recommend casual users to go this way.  Things
>> are much too complex and require broad knowledge.
>>
>> If there are high-level macros available, I strongly recommend to use
>> them.
>
> This characterises the LaTeX approach v. the Plain TeX approach.  LaTeX
> encourages the user to look for a package or packages that will solve
> his/her problem; Plain TeX encourages the user to write a bespoke
> package for him/herself.  By adopting the LaTeX approach, the "casual
> user" will always remain a casual user, dependent on the work of others;
> by adopting the Plain TeX approach, the casual user is forced to think
> for him/herself, to research (in this example) the benefits and
> limitations of direct access to the PDF transformation matrix, the
> specification for the generation of bar codes, whether such bar codes
> can be represented by nothing more complex than the superposition of a
> sequence of TeX \rules & \kerns and the corresponding digit glyphs, and
> so on.  And by so doing, the once-casual-user will become a power user,
> able to think for him/herself, no longer dependent on the work of others.
>
> "Give a man a fish and feed him for a day
>  Teach a man to fish, and feed him and his family for life".
>
> Sincerely,
> ** Phil.



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