Typesetting a poster with content boxes flowing through columns

Question

I try to typeset a poster in LaTeX. The idea is to have the poster components in boxes and arrange the boxes in three columns. The order of the boxes is as they appear in the source file.

Now the tricky bit: I want that the boxes flow automatically into the three columns. I.e. I mean: when the first column is full with say the boxes 1,2 & 3 than box 4 goes into the second column and so forth.

Here an example:

Please note that Box 4 gets cut at the bottom - I want it instead to start automatically in column two.

BTW, the code for this looks something like this:

\documentclass[portrait,final,a0paper]{baposter}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}

\begin{poster}{
  }
  {}
  {Poster Title}
  {Poster authors or subtitle}
  {Logo}

\begin{posterbox}[below=auto]{ 1}
  Text of Box 1\par
  \lipsum[1]  
\end{posterbox}

\begin{posterbox}[below=auto]{ 2}
Text of Box 2\par
  \lipsum[2-3]
\end{posterbox}

\begin{posterbox}[below=auto]{ 3}
Text of Box 3\par
  \lipsum[2]
\end{posterbox}

\begin{posterbox}[below=auto]{ 4}
Text of Box 4\par
  \lipsum[5-6]
\end{posterbox}

\end{poster}
\end{document}

I have tried baposter and looked at tikzposter, but there I have to define in which column a box goes.

Is there any poster template or any tweak to the mentioned classes to make the boxes flow automatically in the columns?

Answer 1

This is not using a custom poster class, but setting up some things manually. Then you can use a multicols environment from the multicol package, and tcolorbox for the boxes. Of course the example below is very basic, and you don't get the predefined styling available in some poster classes.

\documentclass[fontsize=50pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\usepackage{tcolorbox}
\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{
  margin=2cm,
  a0paper
}

\pagecolor{blue!20}
\pagestyle{empty}

\setlength\columnsep{2cm}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\Huge\bfseries
Poster title

\Large
By W. Eirdo
\end{center}

\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 1]
\lipsum[1]
\end{tcolorbox}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 2]
\lipsum[2]
\end{tcolorbox}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 3]
\lipsum[3]
\end{tcolorbox}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 4]
\lipsum[4]
\end{tcolorbox}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 5]
\lipsum[5]
\end{tcolorbox}
\begin{tcolorbox}[title=Stuff 6]
\lipsum[6]
\end{tcolorbox}
\end{multicols}
\end{document}