LaTeX: automatic two-contact content packaging

Question

Let's say I have a list of words that should keep their order and should be sorted by two columns.

I can do this pretty well with a table:

\begin{tabular}{l l}
abc & def \\
ghi & jkl \\
\end{tabular}

But to do this is quite difficult and takes a long time to reorder the list.

Is it possible to have an automatically packed list of two columns? Ideally, I would just like to enter an ordered list:

\begin{magic}
abc \\
def \\
ghi \\
jkl \\
\end{magic}

And bind it to two columns (as the table menu is allowed):

abc def
ghi jkl

Answer 1

Second attempt tested:

\ def \ word {\ let \ word \ rightword \ message {First}}
\ def \ leftword {\\ \ let \ word \ rightword \ message {Left}}
\ def \ rightword {\> \ let \ word \ leftword \ message {Right}}
\begin{tabbing}
\hskip 3in \=\\
% Items
\word One
\word Two
\word Three
\end{tabbing}

. vskip \\ tabbing env . \\ "" .

Answer 2

. , , ,

\begin{multicols}{2}
\begin{itemize}
\item abc
\item def
% etc
\end{itemize}
\end{multicols}

. \usepackage{multicol}, multicols. , \begin{multicols*}{2} , : \begin{multicols} , \begin{multicols*} , ( " " ", ).

Answer 3

You might be better off creating a table in some other program and use a script or export function to convert it to a LaTeX table. The package longtablewill allow this table to wrap multiple pages.