[tex-live] rotating column conent of a twocolumn document

[hw]

Am 17.06.2015 um 16:44 schrieb Ulrike Fischer:
> Am Wed, 17 Jun 2015 14:16:58 +0200 schrieb hw:
>
>> I'm trying to get the content within the columns of a twocolumn
>> document rotated by 90 degrees.
>
> Why are you using twocolumn mode when you actually want the text in
> the second column simply below the text from the first column?

That's because there are two labels side by side spooled up on a big 
roll from which they are being fed into the printer.  The labels cannot 
be physically turned before printing them.  The size of one page in 
latex is of the height of one label and of the width of two labels (plus 
margins).

Using twocolumn, I can print on the left side and on the right side of 
the page just in the way the labels are physically (and the data is) 
arranged.  The content of the right (second) column must not be below 
the content of the left (first) column but to the right of the left column.

Left and right column have different content, and each page (i. e. pair 
of columns) has different content.  The content of each pair comes from 
a single row of a table in a database.

Under these conditions, do you see a way to print the labels side by 
side as required when printing them top-down without rotation instead of 
printing left-right, using two columns?  Perhaps is possible --- though 
I can't imagine atm how that could be done --- yet probably not without 
making the printing algorythm hilariously complicated.