Is there any way to make two pages per sheet (landscape) and the page numbering appears as if each column was a page?

Question

I want to make a landscape sheet with two pages (like two columns) and I want that the page numbering to be a number per page (a number per column) instead of a number per sheet.

I use \usepackage[landscape, twocolumn]{geometry} but I want the page number to appear as if each column was a page.

Is there any way to do that?

And is there any form to make the space between the columns wider?

Answer 1

A rudimentary approach to this would be to use fancyhdr to set the page number of the left and right column using \lfoot and \rfoot respectively. The following MWE does exactly that:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[landscape,twocolumn]{geometry}% http://ctan.org/pkg/geometry
\usepackage{fancyhdr,lipsum}% http://ctan.org/pkg/{fancyhdr,lipsum}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}% Clear header/footer
\lfoot{\makebox[\columnwidth]{\thepage}}
\rfoot{\makebox[\columnwidth]{\number\numexpr\value{page}+1}\stepcounter{page}}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-20]
\end{document}

The right-hand column "page number" is calculated, and also steps the page counter to avoid duplication on subsequent pages. One problem might be that there will always be two "page numbers" on a page. Another issue inherent to this approach would be the use of page references, which will be incorrect.

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The separation between columns is set by the length \columnsep, which you can change using

\setlength{\columnsep}{<len>}

where you specify <len>.