[tex-live] rotating column conent of a twocolumn document

[hw]

Am 18.06.2015 um 02:53 schrieb Herbert Schulz:
>> On Jun 17, 2015, at 7:38 PM, Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at gmx.de> wrote:
>>
>> On 2015-06-17 at 20:05:24 +0200, Ulrike Fischer wrote:
>>
>>> Am Wed, 17 Jun 2015 19:36:13 +0200 schrieb hw:
>>>
>>>>> Why are you using twocolumn mode when you actually want the text in
>>>>> the second column simply below the text from the first column?
>>>
>>>> That's because there are two labels side by side spooled up on a big
>>>> roll from which they are being fed into the printer.
>>> ....
>>>
>>> I don't understand your description. But imho you are wrong. If you
>>> can put your data side-by-side in two column you can also put them
>>> one below the other.
>>
>> Sorry, Ulrike.  When you understand his description you'll recognize
>> that his approach is reasonable.  Admittedly, there is a plethora of
>> other solutions too and I would prefer another approach.
>>
>> Please note that there are many labels on a sheet, two per row, and
>> there are many rows.  We are not talking about just two labels.
>>
>> However, I would first consider to use \rotatebox from the graphics
>> package rather than 'rotating' or 'scape'.
>>
>> Regards,
>>   Reinhard
>
> Howdy,
>
> Is there a reason the labels package can't be set up to do the job?

Yes, the labels do not come in a package but are on a large roll.  One 
roll has 8000 labels, for example.  So you have a long stripe of labels 
which can be fed into the printer in only one direction as they spool 
off the roll through the printer.  This setup is very much like printing 
on "endless" paper as was common in the past before laser or inkjet 
printers became widely used.

If the labels were on sheets which could be fed into a laser/inkjet 
printer, I could simply rotate the sheets sideways.  There is no way the 
labels could somehow be fed sideways into the printer off the roll, not 
only because they are on a roll but also because of the way the printer 
is designed.  You cannot feed an "endless" printer sideways, either.


The easiest way might be to swap the paper size and set to "landscape" 
instead of "portrait" in the PDF viewer which is used to print:  I just 
found out that printing sideways doesn't even work with pages that do 
not have columns :(

Why is this even difficult at all?  It shouldn't be ...