Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

greengeek · Last edited by greengeek on Sat 04 May 2019, 13:17; edited 4 times in total

I like to use leafpad for typing up documents as it is quick and clean and I can dump text from a web page or other source without worrying about strange artefacts from formatting characters. I just end up with straight text, without images or scripts that may have been on the webpage.

I can add formatting later if necessary by using a word processor.

But one feature eludes me: I would like to turn the page into landscape mode and divide the page into two columns.

EXAMPLE:

i use leafpad for my daily ToDo list and would like to have my work-related items in the left column (pane) and my personal related items in the right column (pane).

Does anyone have any idea if such a thing is possible in leafpad or geany? Or possibly in some other very basic notepad style utility?

cheers!

PS: it would be great if the "dual pane" formatted document could then be read by other text editors without special plugins - by which i mean that the seperation into columns is done by spaces or tabs and transparent to other editors - not requiring understanding of special markup formatting. Is such a thing possible??

EDIT:
Possible solutions or alternatives:
Xournal see http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1025669#1025669

greengeek gui (based on fredx and 6502coder work) to form two-column html output from two separate input files:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1026802#1026802

RTFeditor solution: http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1026731#1026731
(Be wary of rtf incompatibilities between different word processing programs)

Abiword used in it's native .abw format instead of rtf may be a good solution which avoids incompatibilities with other WPs. Abiword has good control of formatting and printing. http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=1026862#1026862
.

Semme · Joined: 07 Aug 2011 Posts: 8021 Location: World_Hub

Not that I went too deep, Mate, but, something similar to this, correct?

musher0 · Posted: Wed 27 Mar 2019, 09:44 Post subject:

Hi g/g.

Forget geany for putting columns of text side by side. The < paste > or < join > GNU
utilities were designed for it. < join > operates on the line number in an outside field,
like a database, whereas < paste > operates with the texts directly.

If it's the same text you wish to have in two or three columns, you can use a straight

greengeek · Posted: Wed 27 Mar 2019, 12:47 Post subject:

greengeek · Posted: Wed 27 Mar 2019, 12:50 Post subject:

greengeek · Posted: Wed 27 Mar 2019, 13:56 Post subject:

You know, I'm actually wondering if fields.awk might be one way to go about this. The final document could be prepared by formatting database output into two columns.
Hmmm, I will try to get back to my fields.awk testing.

B.K. Johnson · Joined: 12 Oct 2009 Posts: 791

@greengeek
Try Geany as Semme suggested. You'll find it is what you want.
Here are 3 screenshots
original text > 450 lines
Text in 2 panels after Tools > Split Window >Side by side
Text in 2 panels after scrolling only right panel
To revert: Tools >Split window > unsplit

6502coder · Posted: Wed 27 Mar 2019, 15:48 Post subject:

This isn't really a solution, as it doesn't result in a text document, but when I've had need to create a two-column document of this type I've resorted to HTML, using a one-row table with two cells, each containing a TEXTAREA, like this:

musher0 · Posted: Thu 28 Mar 2019, 10:50 Post subject:

greengeek · Posted: Sun 31 Mar 2019, 15:26 Post subject:

greengeek · Posted: Sun 31 Mar 2019, 15:31 Post subject:

musher0 · Posted: Mon 01 Apr 2019, 00:11 Post subject:

Hi greengeek.

I suppose it depends on the nature of the text AND on what your needs are.

I just today discovered another GNU utility that does columns and which
is called... < column >! It's good to present data in tables, such as score
cards in sports. Don't ask me how it works, I haven't figured it out yet!
You'll easily find some tutorials on the web, though;
e.g. https://www.howtoforge.com/linux-column-command.

It's in the util-linux package. Puppy does not have it. Please find attached
a copy that I compiled a while back..

If you are a history teacher in a high school and you want to present info
on New-Zealand, you may wish to layout the wikipedia article using the
2-column functions in OpenOffice or Libre Office.

As you mentioned earlier, to create a template for a simple to-do,
fields.awk may be just the tool.

With longer texts, an additional parameter to consider is the # of lines
per page.

To each his/her own.

BFN.

greengeek · Posted: Mon 01 Apr 2019, 00:51 Post subject:

Does anyne have any idea how to get leafpad to print a file in landscape mode? I can't find the option within leafpad itself. Maybe it is harcoded somehow. It would be nice to get leafpad to wrap at different values.

Maybe it is part of gtk spec or something.

musher0 · Posted: Mon 01 Apr 2019, 01:09 Post subject:

greengeek · Posted: Mon 01 Apr 2019, 01:18 Post subject:

Thanks musher - does it allow you to change the orientation? Mine is greyed out and there seems no way to change it. Seems like an enforced default somehow.