Create two columns within a topic

[Techno]

We have an unusual problem, and hope someone may be able to help please? Have researched Flare's Help over the last few days, but can't seem to find a solution.

In a number of our Topics, are Snippets, where we have long lists of very short lines. Before and after these lists is normally displayed page width text. The net result of course is excess pages in Word and PDF outputs which we want to reduce the number of.

What we want to do is essentially create two, or even three columns in what we would best describe as "Newspaper Column format". (Perhaps a term not used commonly today). We also need to balance these columns to be equally depth.

The closest we've come to is the way a 2 column Madcap Index appears.

The final acid test is that Adobe PDF Reader should "speak" the columns just as if it was reading a newspaper article. (Reason? Many of our clients are blind and use screen readers to hear what is on the page)

Has anyone any thoughts?

George

[devans]

Sorry if this seems simplistic, but I would just put those short item lists into a two or three column table which is set to Autofit to Window. I'm not sure how screen readers would handle this.

[Techno]

Thanks for the suggestion, but that's another "T" shirt I already have

The problem with Tables is that they tend to read across columns from left to right. We need the formatting such that it reads *down" the first column, and at the end of the first, continues reading from the top of the second.

My initial though was some kind of "variable depth" frame of 2 columns. Hence why I referred to "Newspaper Column Format".

The basic problem is that the text in question can take up 3 or more pages in print. Usually it is a Heading (e.g. Lesson 1, Lesson 2, Lesson 3, etc.) followed by one or more single words, each word on a line of its own. However now and again there may be some narrative which needs to be "word wrapped".

Hope I've explained things better.

George