Forum How do I...?

... insert citations in two-column-layout?

ida
Hello,

we want to include citations in our generated PDF's.

The markup would be like this:

<body>
<p>
Text for citation
<span class="citationnumber">
27
</span>
<span class="citation">
27
</span>
more text.
</p>
<body>

The CSS would be like this:

body {
column-width: 17em;
}

span.citation {
float: left;
margin-left: -5em;
}

This will create a two-column-layout and make the citation appear in the left margin of the page. Which is great as long as the citationnumber in the text is in the left column and not in the right column.

I'd need a way to distinguish the left column from the right column via CSS, is that possible?

Regards, Ida

p.s.: rather than calling it "citation", the term "marginalia" fits probably better here. what is ment is just an annotation on the left or right margin in a page.
mikeday
At the moment I don't think this is possible unfortunately. You can use "float: inside" or outside for creating duplex page layouts, but there is no equivalent value for creating multi-column layouts. We may need to add this to the development roadmap.