Am 17.05.2009 um 23:31 schrieb Alan BRASLAU:
Hello,
I just completed a "big" project making heavy use of columnset, columnsetspan and paragraphs. Very powerful!
Two questions, first: What is the real difference between columns and columnset? I am a bit confused* about their coexistence. Is this purposeful or necessary (or is it simply historical)? Is \startcolumns simply an unnamed, "default" columnset?
columns and columnset are two different mechanism two produce a document with text and two or more columns. the columns mechanism is the older one with limited control about the placement of figures but allows you to mix one column and multicolumns text on a page. columnsets are a new version of the column mechanism with more control about the placement of figures and other features like spanned columns etc. (look at the manual for more) and is better suited for magazine like layouts (Vit Zyka posted a few nice examples a few years ago).
(*and the wiki page needs to be clarified...)
the wiki is from users for users, feel free to correct the articles
Second question, maybe a bug? \startitemize[columns] does not interact well: I suspect that it could or should use paragraphs internally rather than columns so as to work within a column(set).
that's a limitation in tex, when you use the 'columns' key for itemize the items are typeset with a \startcolumns / \stopcolumns before and after the environment and you can nest columns /columnset environments (a tex limitation) but in normal one column text this is not the case and you can use multicolumn items in most cases (in a few cases streamlayer are necessary, e.g. within framedtext) but you can \startcolumns \startsimplecolumns \startitemize \item one \item two ... \stopitemize \stopsimplecolumns \stopcolumns Wolfgang