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<br>
Dear Sirs,<br>
<br>
I represent a commercial company which is exploring options<br>
to automate typesetting of its yearly publication. We currently <br>
use PageMaker.<br>
<br>
To my mind TeX or LaTeX comes first because its meant for it<br>
and i have little experience.<br>
<br>
However i require help in overcoming some specific TeX/LateX <br>
related problem that i am facing.<br>
<br>
We intend to donate to the Development Fund or pay consultancy fees<br>
appreciation of the help.<br>
<br>
I shall brefily descibe what we want to do and what is the problem i
face.<br>
<br>
We publish directory every year using PageMaker for typesetting . This<br>
is really tedious and time consuming. We plan to automate it as our data<br>
is already oraganied in an RDBMS .<br>
<br>
The Directory is a <i>four column</i> document and the pages have <i>headers
<br>
and footers</i>. Inside the page the text flows from top to bottom in a
columns <br>
and the columns are filled from left to right. <br>
<br>
The actual problem is due to the presence of <i>figures </i>that can <i>span</i>
multiple<br>
columns anywhere where in the page . A typical page could contain number<br>
of 1 column figures and 1-2 fugures that can span multiple columns.<br>
<br>
I have tried using the <i>multicol</i> package with hints in<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/multicol_hint.html">http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/multicol_hint.html</a><br>
<br>
but the problem is when the figure extends beyond 1 colum the figure<br>
overlaps the text (the figure becoming transparent)<br>
<br>
Any help extended for the solution will really be appreciated.<br>
<br>
Looking forward to a positive reply<br>
<br>
Warm Regards<br>
Rajesh Kumar Mallah.<br>
CTO, Trade-India.com<br>
<br>
<br>
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