Re: columns and alignment at the bottom

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 22:50 12/10/2003, Ed L Cashin wrote:
>Alexander Klink <alech@alech.de> writes:
>
> > Hi,
> >
> > I am trying to typeset a text which should look roughly like that:
> >
> > |-----|  |-----| |------|
> > |text |  |text | |text  |
> > |     |  |-----| |      |
> > |-----|          |      |
> >          |-----| |      |
> > |-----|  |text | |      |
> > |text |  |-----| |------|
> > |     |
> > |     |  |-----| |------|
> > |     |  |text | |text  |
> > |-----|  |-----| |------|
> >
> > So I have a frames with some text (actually, addresses - Hans, maybe
> > you remember the address booklet I showed you here in Darmstadt) in
> > three columns. So I tried something like:
> >
> > \startcolumns[n=3]
> > \framed{first address...}
> > \vskip 0.5cm plus 1fill
> > \framed{second address...}
> > \vskip 0.5cm plus 1fill
> > \framed{third address...}
> > .
> > .
> > .
> > \stopcolumns
> >
> > Which (obviously because I use TeX code inside ConTeXt - shame on me)
> > fails, the frames are not aligned at the bottom.
>
>This isn't so obvious, IMHO.  I tried to do the same thing back in
>1998 or 1999 to create a directory for a college.  I made the glue
>between the boxes very stretchable, so that context would be able to
>put as much space as necessary between the directory entries in order
>to have the columns line up at the bottom.
>
> >From a user standpoint, it should work.  However, it turns out that
>columns, from an implementation standpoint, are not easy at all in
>tex.  It has to do with subtleties in the page output routine that I
>don't really grasp.
>
> > So I'm looking for a way to typeset them with a distance of at least
> > 0.5cm and align at the bottom - the remaining space should be spread
> > equally...
> > I hope the question is understandable and I hope someone has already
> > done something like this...
>
>Some months ago another columns implementation came out, but if I
>recall correctly, when you have columns of vboxes separated by very
>stretchy glue, the new columns implementation can't bottom-align them
>either.

got you:

\starttext

\startcolumnset

\dorecurse{100}
   {\framed
      [width=\hsize,height=fit,align=normal]
      {\getrandomnumber\whatever{1}{9}%
       \dorecurse\whatever{\strut test \recurselevel\endgraf}}
    \vfilll}

\stopcolumnset

\stoptext