[texhax] dramatist: line numbering

[Sean Sieger]

John Burt <burt at brandeis.edu> writes:

   I'm not completely sure I understand the question. The line in your  
   example that the verse package numbers as the fifth line really is  
   the fifth line.

What you see in my original post are septenary lines--they, like all
lines of verse are counted one at a time.  In verse dialog, a line can
be broken up between more than one speaker and in this case, the line is
counted when it is complete.  Maybe you have some Shakespeare on your
shelf and can see this demonstrated in his heroic lines of dramatic
verse, which is constituted by iambic pentameter lines.  It's a little
rarer, but the same thing can be found in non-dramatic verse and the
line is also counted when it is complete.

I've never used the verse package to typeset my non-dramatic verse and
your response has caused me to want to do it just to look at the
documentation and commands, see below.

   Perhaps it is a confusion over the meaning of "line."

I wouldn't say one is confused, just uninformed, right?

   Verse numbers verse lines, but you might have in mind what dramatists  
   mean by "line," which is to say, "speech," which would mean that the  
   second time
   \man speaks he speaks one "line" (although two lines of verse).

   If the latter is what you mean, you might use poemscol rather than  
   verse to number the lines, using its sentence numbering rather than  
   its line numbering commands.

Um, no, this is fundamental to verse drama, which the documentation of
dramatist says it is meant to typeset, and does in a very nice way.  The
dramatist package's line numbering is broken.

  (Use the latex commands for verse,  
   rather than the poemscol commands for verse, and use the poemscol  
   commands to mark "lines" in your sense.) Mark the line (in your sense  
   of line) with \pmsentence rather than with \verseline.

Right, (I don't even know the correct language to use but,) I guess,
similar to dramatist's `\\!', which ends a speech, another macro (?) and
it's concomitant line-ending command that suspends line numbering so
that a line is counted when it is complete, needs to be
developed--fixing dramatists broken line numbering.

John, thank you for replying to my post as I was looking forward to
getting a dialog started so that I can contribute something back to the
wonderful world of LaTeX.

My question put more succinctly, where do I start?  I'm aware that there
are several packages involved and I am hoping someone can pinpoint where
where the work needs to be done.

Thank you.