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

Philip Taylor P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk
Fri Jun 19 17:40:21 CEST 2015

[Diverted to TeXhax]

hw wrote:

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

Suggestion. Use PdfTeX and \pdfliteral. Sections 4.2/4.3 of the Adobe
PDF 1.7 (ISO 32000-1:2008) specification [1] state :

> • Translations are specified as [ 1 0 0 1 tx ty ], where tx and ty
> are the distances to translate the origin of the coordinate system in
> the horizontal and vertical dimensions, respectively.

> • Scaling is obtained by [ sx 0 0 sy 0 0 ]. This scales the
> coordinates so that 1 unit in the horizontal and vertical dimensions
> of the new coordinate system is the same size as sx and sy units,
> respectively, in the previous coordinate system.

> • Rotations are produced by [ cos θ sin θ −sin θ cos θ 0 0 ], which
> has the effect of rotating the coordinate system axes by an angle θ
> counterclockwise.

> • Skew is specified by [ 1 tan α tan β 1 0 0 ], which skews the x
> axis by an angle α and the y axis by an angle β.

Therefore try :

\setbox 0 = \hbox {\pdfliteral direct {0 1 -1 0 1050 150 cm}
This text is rotated 90 degrees anticlockwise (0 1 -1 0)
and translated through (1050 150) bp}
\box 0
\end

Philip Taylor
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[1]