Re: columns and alignment at the bottom

[Ed L Cashin <ecashin@uga.edu>]

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.

-- 
--Ed L Cashin     PGP public key: http://noserose.net/e/pgp/