I would like to put some longer tabular data inside the multicols environment while maintaining its balancing abilities. I have tried supertabular with the trick to redefine \newpage
as columnbreak
. This isn't good though, because the columns aren't properly balanced. Finally I ended up using \halign
:
\documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=3cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{supertabular}
\usepackage{multicol}
\def\shortlipsum{\par Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque.\par}
\newcounter{entryno}
\setcounter{entryno}{1}
\def\tabline{Test & \the\value{entryno} & Description\addtocounter{entryno}{1}\\}
\def\tablines{\tabline\tabline\tabline\tabline\tabline}
\def\mybreak{\hrule width \columnwidth height 0pt \columnbreak}
\begin{document}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\shortlipsum
\medskip
% % This doesn't balance the columns. Whole table ends up in the left column (it fits)
% \begingroup\let\newpage\mybreak
% \noindent\begin{supertabular*}{\columnwidth}{@{\indent}l l l}
% \tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines
% \end{supertabular*}
% \endgroup
\begingroup\let\\\cr
\noindent\halign{\indent#\quad&#\quad&#\hfil\cr
\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines}
\endgroup
\medskip
\shortlipsum
\end{multicols}
\shortlipsum
\end{document}
I was wondering if I'm the only one using \halign
to achieve this result. On the other hand supertabular
leaves me with an undesired almost empty right column. How would you approach this problem?