Text Formatting ⇒ set text to top within minipage?

[arjen]

Im working on my cv and i would like a layout with on its left the year (like 2005-2007) and on the left some text (quite a lot, maybe 20 lines or so).
When i put 2 minipages next to each other the one with the year set its text in the (vertical) middle of the text box. And this is obviously not what i want. Ive tried dozens of thing, from vfills and vspaces to optional minipage arguments... Can someone help me with this?
This is the code ive got:

Code: Select all

\begin{minipage}{0.2\columnwidth}

\emph{1985 -- 1990}\\
HERE NEED TO BE SPACING FILLED UP TO THE END
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}{0.75\columnwidth}

Philips Research, Eindhoven,  Natuurkundig Laboratorium, department  IC-technology. The work was partially performed in a clean room.
The sputter deposited layers were characterized with various  analysis techniques.
The deposition process has been implemented in a chip manufacturing  process.
I have written various  publications about this process,  for example  in:
Applied Surface Science 38  (1989)  458,
J.Vac.Sci.Technol.B.6 (6)  1988) 1734, 
IEEE Transactions on electron devices,vol.38,no.1 (1991) 88  and
Thin Solid Films,197 (1991) 169.
I presented the results of my work at conferences and companies in The Netherlands and abroad..

\end{minipage}

[frabjous]

You could just use the optional placement parameter for the minipages (t for top):

Code: Select all

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{blindtext,lipsum}
\begin{document}
\noindent\begin{minipage}[t]{0.2\columnwidth}
\emph{1985 -- 1990}
\end{minipage}
\hfill
\begin{minipage}[t]{0.75\columnwidth}
Philips Research, Eindhoven,  Natuurkundig Laboratorium, department  IC-technology. The work was partially performed in a clean room.
The sputter deposited layers were characterized with various  analysis techniques.
The deposition process has been implemented in a chip manufacturing  process.
I have written various  publications about this process,  for example  in:
Applied Surface Science 38  (1989)  458,
J.Vac.Sci.Technol.B.6 (6)  1988) 1734,
IEEE Transactions on electron devices,vol.38,no.1 (1991) 88  and
Thin Solid Films,197 (1991) 169.
I presented the results of my work at conferences and companies in The Netherlands and abroad..
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

But are you really sure you want to do do this with minipages? Perhaps columns or a longtable would be more appropriate. (See, e.g., parallel or ledpar or parcolumns). You could also look into something like the moderncv class which already has this set up pre-defined for you.