Asciidoctor-pdf: Two-column rendering?

[orloffm]

Sorry for using "issues" for this, but is it possible to create a two-column "scientific" layout for some text?

I need to create a huge table of key words and their appearances. Not sure even to how approach this.

[mojavelinux]

Prawn does support columns, but we have not implemented in Asciidoctor PDF for a few reasons. First, it would introduce even more challenges to calculating and arranging blocks and we haven't solved the problems with a single column yet. Second, two columns seems to me more of a legacy layout from the print days and less needed in modern documents. But I'm open to listening other views.

If you need two columns to achieve side-by-side content, then I would recommend using a table. Keep in mind that we don't yet have support for AsciiDoc content cells, so that presents some challenges. But that fix is in development and is scheduled for the beta1 release.

[chad-loder]

I would like to see two-column layout with automatic flow. This is very popular with legal contracts, and certain well-known management consulting companies produce easy-to-recognize two-column layouts. This is quite doable in Pandoc -> CSS - > PDF and it would be lovely if asciidoctor-pdf could support it as well.

[IanDarwin]

Hi Dan! I too would like to see _n_-column layout with directed automatic flowing!
First, the "two columns seems to me more of a legacy layout from the print days" is actually, IMHO and ISTR, more readable - even on a chromebook; anything except a phone - compared to a single really wide column.
Second: If AsciiDoctor is to become one's only doc tool, it must gain the ability to do things like 3-cols-in-landscape fan-folds/brochures (like this one I did where the first page when it's folded is the rightmost column - you really need arbitrary flow notation for something like this.

[mojavelinux]

This is a lot of work and I don't have time to commit to it. If someone in the community is willing to take it on, I would certainly sign-off on the enhancement.

[ahus1]

There is another project in the Asciidoctor ecosystem called "Asciidoctor.js PDF" that supports multi-column layouts. This links to an example: https://github.com/Mogztter/asciidoctor-pdf.js/tree/master/examples/cheat-sheet

TL;DR: styling is done using CSS, layout of the content plus PDF generation is done through headless chrome/puppeteer.

[mojavelinux]

That's correct. I'm probably not going to pursue two-column rendering in Asciidoctor PDF. If someone is willing to implement it, and can demonstrate it passes all the tests, I'd strongly consider merging it in. But there's a limit to what we can do with layouts in Asciidoctor PDF and is the future asciidoctor-pdf.js is going to fill. (Though keep in mind that asciidoctor-pdf.js is still very young and we need to give it time to develop and mature).