I have a multi column layout that I'm trying to set up using prince. What I am trying to do is to reliably position a div at the top of the second column on the first page of each of my chapters.

-----------------------------
|                           |
|         Chapter N         |
|                           |
-----------------------------
|             |             |
|      1      |      *      |
|             |             |
|             |-------------|
|             |             |
|             |      2      |
|             |             |
-----------------------------

-----------------------------
|             |             |
|             |             |
|      3      |      4      |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
-----------------------------

So basically I am looking to create a div at the location designated by * on the first page in each of my chapters.

I have tried using something like:

<div class="chaptertext" style="column-count: 2">

Some dummy text to keep div from going to top of column 1.

<div class="secondcolumndiv" style="float: prince-column-top">
Second column text goes here.
</div>

The rest of my text.....

</div>

This isn't really ideal, but I was thinking this would trick prince into putting my content into the first column that it could that could bump it up against the top of the column, which I was thinking was column 2. However the best I have been able to accomplish with the above method is to get my secondcolumndiv are to show up on the first column of the SECOND chapter page (in area 3 designated above).

Is there a reliable way to get prince to place my content at the start of the second column in my multi column layout? What would be ideal be something like

float: prince-second-column-top;

where I could explicitly target a column number in my style and then be done with it.

"float: column-top next" should do the trick!

Thanks for the help, mikeday, that was exactly what I needed.

It turns out I was relying too heavily on the Prince "columns" documentation for trying to find a solution to this and more or less neglecting the documentation on "floats", which probably would have helped me quite a bit. Turns out there's a lot of good stuff there.

Thanks again!