mul­ti­col – In­ter­mix sin­gle and mul­ti­ple columns

Mul­ti­col de­fines a mul­ti­cols en­vi­ron­ment which type­sets text in mul­ti­ple columns (up to a max­i­mum of 10), and (by de­fault) bal­ances the end of each col­umn at the end of the en­vi­ron­ment. The pack­age en­ables you to switch be­tween any (per­mit­ted) num­ber of columns at will: there is no im­posed "clear page" op­er­a­tion, as there is in un­adorned LaTeX at a switch be­tween \onecol­umn and \twocol­umn sec­tions. The mul­ti­col­umn en­vi­ron­ment can also be used in­side a box, thus al­low­ing mul­ti­columned in­sets in text.
Mul­ti­col patches the out­put rou­tine, and may clash with other pack­ages that do the same (e.g., longtable); fur­ther­more, there is no pro­vi­sion for sin­gle col­umn floats in­side a mul­ti­col­umn en­vi­ron­ment, so fig­ures and ta­bles must be coded in-line (us­ing, for ex­am­ple, the H mod­i­fier of the float pack­age).
The pack­age is part of the tools bun­dle in the LaTeX re­quired dis­tri­bu­tion.