[XeTeX] Tabulated RTL poetry

[John Was]

Hello

I'm a plain TeX/XeTeX user so am not sure whether normal TeX commands work 
differently in the LaTeX environment, but in such a situation plain TeX 
could use e.g.

\def\parttwo#1{\unskip \endgraf \nobreak \kern -\baselineskip
       \nobreak \noindent \hskip 12pc #1\endgraf}

Your post-caesural parts would then all be included in \partwo{TEXT HERE}

(Of course change 12pc to whatever indentation you require.)

You could have instead e.g. \syriacline with two arguments so that the 
command includes the entire line:

\def\syriacline#1#2{\leavevmode #1\parttwo{#2}} (assuming you've already 
defined \parttwo as above).  You would then have each line enclosed in the 
command:

\syriacline{FIRST BIT OF TEXT}{SECOND BIT OF TEXT}

Or if it helps visually

\syriacline{FIRST BIT OF TEXT}%
        {SECOND BIT OF TEXT}
But
there may well be a much more elegant solution within LaTeX.


John

Oxford



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gareth Hughes" <garzohugo at gmail.com>
To: "Unicode-based TeX for Linux and other platforms" <xetex at tug.org>
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2009 12:01 PM
Subject: [XeTeX] Tabulated RTL poetry


> Dear friends,
>
> I am writing an article that requires typesetting lengthy (each longer
> than a page) Syriac (right-to-left) poems. It would be nice to use a
> decent 'verse' environment for them, to provide occasional line
> numbering etc. However, the main problem is that the poems have a
> regular caesura in the middle of each line, and this should be typeset
> as a tabulated space, so that the second halves of each line are
> vertically right-aligned with each other. The obvious thing to use is a
> tabular environment, but this creates awkward clashes either with the
> verse environment or the directionality. Should/could I simply define a
> command to set following text an absolute length from the right margin,
> without considering the text that is already there?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Gareth.
>
> -- 
> Gareth Hughes
>
> Department of Eastern Christianity
> Oriental Institute
> Pusey Lane
> Oxford
> OX1 2LE
>
> +44 (0)1865 610227
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