Text Formatting ⇒ Bibliography section in multicols env

[achim]

Hi

I'm writing on a paper. The main text body is set in one column. In order to save some space, I'd like to put the bibliography in a multicols environment.

Have a look at the pseudo code (it is not a minimal working example as I don't cite anything and I don't provide a *.bib file...):

Code: Select all

\documentclass[10pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{multicol}
\usepackage{cite}

\beging{document}

\section{Main body}

Some random text with citations... %\cite{...}

\begin{multicols}{2}
	\small
	\bibliographystyle{plain}
	\bibliography{mybib}
\end{multicols}

\end{document}

This then yields something like:

bib.png (31.12 KiB) Viewed 14449 times

The problem with my solution is that the section title References already prints in the two column environment (which obviously must be the case as I call \bibliography{...} in the multicols environment).
I'd rather have the section in the one columns area, so that the references in the right column start at the same height as the ones on the left.

Code: Select all

References

[1] ...       [8] ...
[2] ...       [9] ...

and not:


References    [8] ...
              [9] ...
[1] ...       [10] ...
[2] ...       [11] ...

Cheers

[localghost]

[…] Have a look at the pseudo code (it is not a minimal working example as I don't cite anything and I don't provide a *.bib file...) […]

In principal a minimal working example (MWE) is always possible. In this case a short bibliography database file would have done.

Regarding the problem you have to redefine the thebibliography environment to make it use the multicols environment. See sample below.

Code: Select all

\begin{filecontents*}{\jobname.bib}
@BOOK{knuth:84,
  author={Donald Ervin Knuth},
  title={The \TeX book},
  year={1984},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley}
}
@BOOK{lamport:94,
  author={Leslie Lamport},
  title={\LaTeX\ - A Document Preparation System},
  note={User's Guide and Reference Manual},
  year={1994},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley},
  edition={Second}
}
@BOOK{mitgoo:04,
  author={Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goossens},
  title={The \LaTeX\ Companion},
  year={2004},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley},
  edition={Second}
}
@BOOK{goomit:07,
  author={Michel Goossens and Frank Mittelbach and Sebastian Rahtz and Denis Roegel and Herbert Voss},
  title={The \LaTeX\ Graphics Companion},
  year={2007},
  publisher={Addison-Wesley},
  edition={Second}
}
\end{filecontents*}
\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,english]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[includeheadfoot,margin=2cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{multicol}

% bibliography environment over multiple columns (multicol)
\makeatletter
\renewenvironment{thebibliography}[1]{%
  \section*{\refname \@mkboth{\MakeUppercase\refname}{\MakeUppercase\refname}}%
  \begin{multicols}{2}
  \list{\@biblabel{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}{%
    \settowidth\labelwidth{\@biblabel{#1}}%
    \leftmargin\labelwidth
    \advance\leftmargin\labelsep
    \@openbib@code
    \usecounter{enumiv}%
    \let\p@enumiv\@empty
    \renewcommand\theenumiv{\@arabic\c@enumiv}}%
    \sloppy
    \clubpenalty4000
    \@clubpenalty \clubpenalty
    \widowpenalty4000%
    \sfcode`\.\@m}
{
  \def\@noitemerr{\@latex@warning{Empty `thebibliography' environment}}%
  \endlist\end{multicols}
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
  \nocite{*}
  \bibliographystyle{plain}
  \small
  \bibliography{\jobname.bib}
\end{document}

Note that this redefinition only works with the »article« class because the environment code was taken from there. For other classes it requires other modifications.


Thorsten

[achim]

Thanks

I just came up with a bit of a (simple) cheat instead of your (rather complex, but certainly better) solution.

Code: Select all

\section*{References}
\begin{multicols}{2}
    \small
    \renewcommand{\refname}{ \vspace{-\baselineskip}\vspace{-1.1mm} }
    \bibliographystyle{plain}
    \bibliography{paper_ref}
\end{multicols}

ref.png (29.14 KiB) Viewed 14436 times

What I do here is put the Reference section manually outside the multicols environment and then just replace the \refname command with a negative space in order to make up for the gap.

What I couldn't work out though is how to get the exact 'line grating' (distance form baseline to baseline. So, for now, I had to tune it with the -1.1mm, which is sort of ugly I'm afraid.

Cheers
Achim