How to put table into multicols

Question

I'm trying to get table formated like this:

A    desription of A      D    description of D
B    long description     Eee  description of Eee
     of B                 F    description of F
Cccc description of Cccc  

and I'm limited with space on the page where this table should be.

When I use \begin{tabular}{lp{5cm}lp{5cm}} I get table which is too long to fit onto the page, longtable with same parameters throws last line onto next page.

With multicols package I tried tabbing environment, but long description of B goes over Eee and longtable throws error that it can t be used in twocolumn. description environment can do that sort of things but I can't force it to align descriptions

Is there chance to make this table automatically without experimenting with \\positioning or creating two independent tables?

Answer 1

You could use a description environment, it works in twocolumn mode as well and matches the original meaning.

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\twocolumn
\begin{description}
  \item[A] description of A
  \item[B] long description of B
  ...
\end{description}
\end{document}

There are packages such as enumitem and mdwlist which provide tools for customizing the layout of the description list, so you don't have to use the default layout but can make it look like a table.

Answer 2

You may try tabularx from the tabularx package

\begin{tabularx}{\columnwidth}{@{}lXlX@{}}

I've used @{} at left and right to give the table maximum room.