[XeTeX] Bidipoem for dialogue poetry

[Paul Isambert]

  Le 10/10/2010 00:48, Gareth Hughes a écrit :
> Gareth Hughes wrote:
>> As you can see from my attached example, the persona is included as a
>> part of the first hemistich, but to make the lines look nice it is also
>> included in the following three hemistiches within \phantom{} commands.
>> I also need to set \poemcolsep to -1em to close the 'phantom' gap. I
>> hope that makes sense.
>>
>> Well, the problem is that it's not a pretty workaround and the beginning
>> of the first hemistich of each line doesn't line up, because personae
>> are of different lengths. I suppose I need some means of marking up each
>> line as having
>>
>> 	persona: first-hemistich&  second-hemistich
> OK. I think \llap is useful here to give the personae and there phantom
> versions zero width aligned right.

That's what I would have said. I consider \llap probably one of the more 
useful macros in TeX.
Note that if you still want personae flushed left, you can use:

\def\persona#1{%
   \quitvmode\llap{\hbox to <some length>{#1\hfil}}%
}

with <some length> wide enough to accommodate all names.

Paul