Perhaps some future googlers will find this usefull.
I had to stumble on it after much frustration.
Under X the mouse only 'cuts' what you see on the screen
-- a bit like screen-capture.
So if you [I use mc] adjust you font-size and screen-width,
you can limit the text shown to the reqired column.
Then after you've cut the displayed text you just paste it
to a new file; and by this method build up single-column
[normal computer format] text from the original newspaper
type multi-column text.
Oh, of course you use <pdf2ascii> or whatever the
eqivalent is called, to transform the *.pdf to text.
I use mc, which does it 'automagically'
== Chris Glur.
