MergeTwoColumns

Merge Two Columns

Please take a look at the attached image to get an overview of a use case for this function.

The "Merge Two Columns" function can create continuous lines from lines mistakenly split by the OCR into two page-columns. As an example of this function consider when page numbers in a Table of Contents ended up as another page column instead being part of the same lines. You may need to rearrange the nodes first to let this merge work. To use select lines in a paragraph, and same number of lines in another, then all words of the second paragraph will be added to the end of the lines of the first paragraph.

• This works with LINES only
• So you must cut & paste nodes if the structure is different
• The two paragraphs must follow (directly) in the order they want to merge them
• Same number of lines must be selected in both paragraphs
• You must manually delete emptied nodes

As you can see on the attached image, first paragraph first line: "10", second line is "20". The other paragraph's first line is "REM FOPROGRAM", then "CLS", so the resulting lines will be

10 REM FOPROGRAM
20 CLS

Split Two Columns

The oposite of "Merge two columns"... a similar, largely manual method is available for splitting two page columns when the OCR created long lines instead of two separated page columns.

You need to select every word in the second column, this can be done with combinations of CTRL click and SHIFT click, because SHIFT allows to select multiple ranges, selects backwards to the previous selected word. We may improve this later with a simple drag-box selection.

When all ends of the "long-lines" are selected, Cut & Paste these words into another PARAGRAPH. (You may need to create containing PAGECOLUMN and REGION first.) This will detect that words were on multiple lines at their original location, so it will keep them on multiple lines. (Be warned that if you paste those WORDS into a LINE, they all will be joined as one line!)