[texhax] stretch section title in twocolumn

Paul Tremblay phthenry at iglou.com
Tue May 16 17:52:28 CEST 2006


On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 08:58:30AM -0400, tom sgouros wrote:
> 
> It would help everyone help you if you were to be more specific.  Do you
> want the titles in the left column to extend into the right column?
> Right column titles to extend to the left?  Only at the top of the page?
> In the middle of the page?  Or is there a difficulty with using
> multicols (floats come to mind)?  I've fidgeted with this in the past,
> but when I saw your question last night I didn't know enough about what
> you wanted to answer helpfully.
> 

Sorry I was unclear. I convert XML documents into LaTeX to format
them. When I want to have a new page run, I use the following code:

\cleardoublepage
\section{Title}

I use this code because it is more flexible. My conversion code only
has to work with customizing the \section each time. 

I want the output to have a title across the top of a page before the
columns are set up. I would need the title to stretch across both
columns, both left and right. But I only need the column to stretch
across both columns at the top of the page; there will be no text
above the title. 

The structure for the XML document is:

section break with page break
  title
    section break
      title
    end section break
end section break with page break

If I use multicols, I have to go against the logic of the structure.
Logically I would start the multicols argument when I get to the
section break with page break, but then have to interrupt that for my
title. The conversion rules work with the logic of the document. So if
I used multicols, my LaTeX document looks like:

\cleardoublepage
% make headers and footers each time
\makepagestyle{first}
\thispagestyle{first}
\makepagestyle{odd-or-even}
\makeoddhead{odd-or-even}{}{}{}
\makeevenhead{odd-or-even}{}{}{}
\makeoddfoot{odd-or-even}{\thepage}{}{}
\makeevenfoot{odd-or-even}{\thepage}{}{}
\pagestyle{odd-or-even}

% start a multicols
\begin{multicols}{2}
\section{The Title}

text\par

\end{multicols}

% end example snippet

The title in this case would only span across one column. I know it
seems easy to simply move my \section{The Title} one line above,
before the multicols environment, but actually in the conversion it
requires a lot more rules. I would have to write two different set of
rules, one for a multicolumn document and one for a one-column
document. In addition, I would have to make sure I started the
multicols environment each time I have a section break. 

Thanks

Paul


-- 

************************
*Paul Tremblay         *
*phthenry at iglou.com    *
************************


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