[texhax] How to reverse the columns in "twocolumn" layout?

[Tigran Aivazian]

Thank you, Donald! I confirm that your changes work just fine.
(but in our case we'll have to make more changes because we already have 
hooks in \@outputdblcol for correct positioning of marn output in 
twocolumn case, so there is a bit more work but it is all doable).

Thanks again for your help.

Kind regards
Tigran

On Fri, 21 Nov 2008, Donald Arseneau wrote:

>
> Tigran Aivazian <tigran at bibles.org.uk> writes:
>
>> I would like to use "twocolumn" option for my Hebrew and other Semitic Bible
>> editions (e.g. Syriac, Aramaic etc) which are written right-to-left, but the
>> problem of "twocolumn" is that it starts from the left column whereas I need
>> it to start the page from the right column.
>>
>> Is there any way to tell XeLaTeX to do this? I looked at the "*dblcolumn*
>> routines in base/latex.ltx but cannot figure out how to do this.
>
> It is quite easy.  Copy out the \@outputdblcol definition from latex.ltx,
> and put it in a .sty (or .cls) file, then, in your copy, exchange the two
> lines
>                             \box\@leftcolumn \hss}%
> and
>                             \box\@outputbox \hss}%
>
>
> You should also declare \@mparswitchtrue.
>
>
> Correction on my simple exchange above!  I realize that will put
> the auxiliary file entries in the wrong order, so, for example,
> bibTeX may get the numbering wrong, and toc entries will be out
> of order.
>
> A more thorough redefinition (again, untested) is (part of
> \@outputdblcol)
>
>   \setbox\@outputbox \vbox {%
>                         \hb at xt@\textwidth {%
>                           \kern\textwidth \kern-\columnwidth  %**
>                           \hb at xt@\columnwidth {%
>                             \box\@leftcolumn \hss}%
>                           \kern-\textwidth %**
>                           \hfil
>                           {\normalcolor\vrule \@width\columnseprule}%
>                           \hfil
>                           \kern-\textwidth  %**
>                           \hb at xt@\columnwidth {%
>                             \box\@outputbox \hss}%
>                           \kern-\columnwidth \kern\textwidth %**
>                                             }%
>                              }%
>    \@combinedblfloats
>
>
> (All repositioning is done with \kern and marked with %**)
>
>
> -- 
> Donald Arseneau                          asnd at triumf.ca
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