Vertical numbering with multienumerate environment

Question

I'm trying to get the numbering in the multienumerate environment to go vertically instead of horizontally. So,

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multienum}

\begin{document}

\begin{multienumerate}
    \mitemxx{item 1}{item 4}
    \mitemxx{item 2}{item 5}
    \mitemxx{item 3}{item 6}
\end{multienumerate}

\end{document}

Is there an obvious way to do this? I've tried a number of different ways of getting an enumerated list into a tabular environment with the item numbers aligned, to no avail so far. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

Hardly dare to disagree with @egreg, but multienum can do this if you help it by telling it how many entries are in the column (which it could do automatically on a second pass, but here I provide an argument to do that)

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multienum}

\def\vmultienumerate#1{% number of entries in the column
 \setcounter{multienumi}{-#1}%
 \addtocounter{multienumi}{1}%
\renewcommand\labelenumi
{\ifnum\value{multienumi}>#1
 \addtocounter{multienumi}{-#1}%
 \addtocounter{multienumi}{1}%
\else
 \addtocounter{multienumi}{#1}%
\fi
  \arabic{multienumi}.}
}

\begin{document}

\begin{multienumerate}\vmultienumerate{3}
    \mitemxx{item 1}{item 4}
    \mitemxx{item 2}{item 5}
    \mitemxx{item 3}{item 6}
\end{multienumerate}

\end{document}

Answer 2

It's impossible for multienum to do what you want, as it doesn't know in advance how many items you've got. Use multicol:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{multicol}

\begin{document}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{enumerate}
\item item 1
\item item 2
\item item 3
\item item 4
\item item 5
\item item 6
\end{enumerate}
\end{multicols}

\end{document}