Nomencl: how to remove indentation in two columns multiline entries

Question

I'm using the nomencl package to write a two columns list of terms I frequently use in my thesis. Everything looks fine except that I don't like that whenever the explanation of a term takes more than one line a small indentation is inserted. What I have now is something that looks like:

MyTerm detailed explanation of my term.
   and here follows the second line.

I'd like to have is so that it looks like:

MyTerm detailed explanation of my term.
and here follows the second line.

Can someone please help me? I've tried to go through the documentation of the package but I couldn't really get much out of it!

Answer 1

In the following example I used print the nomenclature in onecolumn mode and in twocolumn mode. The mode twocolumn is generated in two ways. The first one uses the command \twocolumn and the second one the environment multicols*

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{nomencl}
\makenomenclature
\setlength{\nomlabelwidth}{.20\hsize}
\begin{document}
Text
\nomenclature{WYSIWYG}{Is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content (text and graphics)}
\printnomenclature
\begin{multicols*}{2}
\printnomenclature
\end{multicols*}
\clearpage
\twocolumn
\printnomenclature
\end{document}

After the correct compilation: pdflatex file.tex makeindex file.nlo -s nomencl.ist -o file.nls pdflatex file.tex

I get the correct output:

Answer 2

If I understand correctly what you're looking for, you need to change the settings of the list environment hard coded in nomencl.sty. But I don't see something that is two-columns specific (as the title of your question stated), so maybe I missed something.

    % This is test.tex
    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{nomencl}

    \makeatletter
    \def\thenomenclature{%
      \@ifundefined{chapter}%
      {
        \section*{\nomname}
        \if@intoc\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{\nomname}\fi%
      }%
      {
        \chapter*{\nomname}
        \if@intoc\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{\nomname}\fi%
      }%

      \nompreamble
      \list{}{%
        \labelwidth\nom@tempdim
        \leftmargin=0pt
        \itemindent=\dimexpr\itemsep+\labelwidth\relax
        \itemsep\nomitemsep
        \let\makelabel\nomlabel}}
    \makeatother

    \makenomenclature

    \begin{document}
    Some text \nomenclature{LONG}{This is a long long long long long long
      long long long long long long long long long long long long long
      long long long long long long long long long long long long long
      long long long long long long long long long long long long long
      long long long text}

    \printnomenclature

    \end{document}