Typesetting a bilingual poetry book
Typesetting a bilingual poetry book
This page describes the method of typesetting a book of poetry in Hindi and Czech using XeLaTeX. The macros were developed for typesetting the book entitled Path to Red Sky (Aruna Rai and Zdeněk Wagner).
This package came to life after copying macros from book to book. For this
reason usage suggestions are shown between \iffalse and \fi but
either without any explanation or with comments in Czech. The license is LPPL and the
package will probably be published in the CTAN in the future.
The package is suitable both for typesetting pure poetry and prose containing
poems. The source texts are supplied in many forms but very rarely in TeX. The macros were
therefore prepared to make typesetting easy. Hardly anybody would like to append
\\ to the end of each verse in a book with 100+ pages of poetry. Thus a
configurable package was developed as time passed.
\VerseLeftIndent, \VerseRightIndent:
If poems are inserted into a middle of a prose, they have usually a different
indent on the left and right side. They are set by these dimensions the defaulkt values of
which are zero.
\ExtraIndent:
It is required that in some poems selected stanzas have larger left indentation.
Its value is set in the dimension the default value of which is
5 mm.
\AboveVerse\Skip, \BelowVerseSkip:
These length registers are used if the poems are inserted into a prose. They
define a flexible vertical space above and below a poem. Their default values are zero.
\VerseFont
defines a font for poetry especially if it difers from a forn for a prose. The
default definition is empty.
\slokafil
is an expandable part of the space between stanzas. Its meaning will be
explained later. You will certainly have to change its value as shown in section
arunakash.sty.
Verse
is the main environment where each line is a verse and empty lines separate
stanzas. If a verse is wider that the text width, the second part of the verse must be right
aligned. It is done automatically in this environment but it does not find always the best
place for the line break. The \\ macro is define in such a way to enable manual
setting of the line break.
posun
(meaning shift) is an enviroment where the left indent is advanced by
\ExtraIndent.
escape
is used to escape from a poem to a prose. It is useful for scenic notes in a
theatre play written as a poem. It can contain several paragraphs
\Esc
has the very same purpose as the escape enviroment but is intended
for insertion of a short text.
\Page:
It is necessary to enforce a page break in some situation. It is necessary to
use this macro inside the Verse environment.
\bv, \ev, \cbv
are useful abbreviations with the following definitions
\def\bv{\begin{Verse}}
\def\ev{\end{Verse}}
\def\cbv{\clearpage\bv} |
Line breaking is implemented by two mechanisms, namely the
\ObeyEndlines macro and by definition of a paragraph shape. The
\ObeyEndlines macro ensures that each verse is typeset as a one-line
paragraph and the end of the verse is entered in the source file as an end of line. Its
definition is inspired by the \obeylines macro, see
Donald E. Knuth: The TeXbook.
The paragraph shape is defined inside the Verse environment. The
\VerseLeftIndent and \VerseRightIndent have fixed lengths
therefore we can treat them as zero while exmining the effect of individual parameters.
Each line has a space of length \leftskip on the left side and
\rightskip on the right side. Additionally, the paragraph contains
\parindent on the left side of the first line and \parfillskip
on the right side of the last line. Both of them are set to zero. Upon entering the
horizontal mode, i.e. at the beginning of the paragraph, the contents of the
\everypar register is inserted. It contains a space of the same type of
expansibility as \leftskip but with an opposite sign. The expansibilities
will thus vanish and the line will be left aligned due to infinite expansibility of
\rightskip on the right side. If the verse is wider than the text width, it
will be broken. The situation on the first line is the same but the second line will not
contain the space from the \everypar register. The \leftskip
contains infinite expansibility of higher order than \rightskip, therefore
the line will be right aligned.
When typesetting poetry, the page break should preferably occur between
stanzas, inside a stanza only in case when stanzas are long and too much empty space would
remain at the bottom of a page. If just a poetry is being typeset,
\raggedbottom can be used and page breaking solved by suitable penalization.
However, if we typeset a combination of a poetry and a prose, \flushbottom
should be used and page breaking controlled by a different method. Remember that each
verse is a paragraph, thus \clubpenalty and \widowpenalty make
no sense here. On the contrary, the infinite value of \interlinepenalty
prevents a page break between lines of a long, broken verse.
The page break is implemented in the \auto@par macro which
contains two conditional statements. The \ifhmode condition tests in which
mode the macro is invoked. In horizontal mode, i.e. at the end of a verse, a paragraph is
terminated and a penalty of value \slokapenalty is inserted. It penalizes a
page break inside a stanza. A material allowing a page break between stanzas is inserted
when invoked in the vertical mode. The space should have a height of a single line. If the
source file contained several consecutive empty lines, we would get the same number of
vertical spaces on the typeset output which is undesirable, therefore the
\ifDoSkip@ condition ensures that the vertical material is inserted only
once. A stanza ends always with \slokapenalty which must be positive,
otherwise it would make no sense. If two penalties meet, the one with the lower value
wins. We will thus have the following elements between stanzas:
\penalty\z@\vskip\the\baselineskip plus \slokafil\penalty\z@\vskip\z@ plus -\slokafil
Expansibilities in glues 2 and 4 have opposite signs. If a page is not broken
here and a next stanza appears on the same page, they vanish and the vertical space will
have a height of a single line. The page break is possible in penalties 1 and 3 only. The
first case applies if a stanza ends at the bottom of a page. The latter applies if there
is a space for at least one line but the next stanza cannot be started here. In both cases
the following elements will be discarded and the following page will start with the first
line of the next stanza. The default setting of \slokafil prevents a page break
inside a stanza unless the stanza is longer than the page height. A more suitable setting
will be shown in the description of the
arunakash.stypackage.
The license of these files is Public Domain which means that you can do with them whatever you want. Almost certainly you will have to modify them for use in your project.
The macros for the book cover are usually different, at least the dimensions differ. There is, however, a common part, especially the scripts. Notice that we use a commercial font for the Latin alphabet and for Hindi we take advantage of mapping the Arabic numerals to the Devanāgarī digits.
Page dimensions and the layout will be defined by the
zwpagelayout package which must know the font sizes in advance. They are
therefore defined in a separate file.
Macros in this package do not serve for critical editions. Their only purpose is support of typesetting where the left page contains one language variant while the other language variant appears on the right page. In theory, number of pages of some parts can differ in exceptional cases. The following text will explain the main macros.
\ZWnormalsize
defines the baselineskip. The value is needed on several places and was
changed several times during the book design.
Most poems fit to one page, exceptionally a small part remains to the next
page. The design therefore requires the first verse at the same vertical position on the
page, the title is positioned higher. It is achieved by a suitable setting of
\splittopskip.
The author's name will be printed in the Latin script in the Czech version and
in Devanāgarī in the Hindi version. Internal macro \zw@aut stores both variants
in the \Author and \Rachnakar macros (rachnakar is a Hindi
translation of author). The package defines easy-to-use shortcuts
\aruna, \zw.
\pagestyle{kitab}
is interesting just by the fact that pagination on the even (Hindi) pages is
placed inside the \texthindi macro. As mentioned in section common.sty, the digits will thus be converted to Devanāgarī.
\firstlang, \secondlang, \endlangs
serve as language separators. The author name is correspondingly assigned to
the \zw@autname macro in each version. The text is stored in a box and
\zw@tn defines which table of contents will be used. Hindi is activated on
the even pages.
\zw@testlang
checks the current state and executes the output procedure. As already
mentioned, the macros are not intended for a critical edition thus in case of prose one
language version can be one page shorter than the other. First we verify which variant
still contains a text. The \ifvoid condition is true if the box is empty
(void). A zero is first assigned to an auxiliary counter ad is incremented by one if the
Hindi box is nonempty, and by two if the Czech box is nonempty. If the value of the
counter is positive, we proceed to the next step, otherwise we are finished.
\zw@dolang
forces a new page. If the value of the auxiliary counter is odd, we print the
Hindi page, otherwise we emit an empty page. If the value of the counter is greater
than 1, the Czech page is printed, otherwise the page is left empty. Afterwards we
use again
\zw@testlang.
\zw@split
processes the box. If it is higher than the page, a corresponding part is
split and the rest is kept in the box, otherwise we output the whole box. The discardable
elements were removed during splitting therefore the result is almost always lower that
the page. We thus have to fill it with
\vfill.
\slokafil
specifies the minimum size of an incomplete stanza. Why 60pt? Because it is a
bug. Originally the baselineskip was 15pt and the minimum size was set to four lines.
After changing the baselineskip I forgot to change this value accordingly. The result
looked fine therefore I did not notice. The value cannot be defined as
4\ZWnormalsize pt. It would expand to 418pt which is not what we want LaTeX
offers auxiliary counter \@tempdima thus the following code can be used:
\@tempcnta=\ZWnormalsize
\multiply\@tempcnta by 4
\edef\slokafil{\the\@tempcnta pt}
|
\bv
is a redefined shortcut allowing insertion of a title and writing to the table
of contents.
\shirshak
is used to typeset the title of the preface and the name of its author.
\tableofcontents
typesets both language variants of the table of contents using the algrithm
explained above. The \@dottedtocline switches to \normalfont
when outputting the page number which we do not want in the Hindi variant. Using the
\ifdvng we set it to
\relax.
This example shows how the first and last poem and the table of contents were entered. The source code for the opening pages, preface and colophon is not given.
\zw
\firstlang
\bv{ताजमहल}
हे ताजमहल!
तुम्हारे रत्नों में
क्या मोहक फ़साना
छिपा हुआ है?
बिना कुछ कहे
अकेले खड़े हो तुम
यमुना के किनारे पर।
तुम्हारी दीवारों में
शांति से सो रहा है
किसी का अमर प्यार।
दिलों में मुमताज और शाहजहाँ को लेकर
लोग यहाँ रोज़ आया करते हैं।
दिलों में मोहब्बत महसूस करके
लोग प्यार का स्मारक देखते हैं
हे ताजमहल!
जो इश्क़ की यादें
तुम्हारे अंदर ढूँढ रहे हैं
वे प्यार से मिलेंगे
ख़ूबसूरत मक़बरे में।
हे ताजमहल!
मेरा भी सवाल है।
आज मेरी मुमताज़
कहाँ खो गई है?
शायद चली गई है वह
अरुणाकाश में।
\ev
\secondlang
\bv{Tádžmahal}
Ach, Tádžmahal!
V tvých zdobných skvostech
jaký se skrývá
půvabný příběh?
Zamlkle stojíš,
samotný
na břehu řeky Jamuny.
A ve tvých zdech
v poklidu spí
nesmrtné čísi lásky dech.
S Mumtáz a Šáhdžahánem v srdcích
lidé sem denně vcházejí.
Se srdcem milostně planoucím
památník lásky vídají.
Ach, Tádžmahal!
Kdo lásek památku
vyhledá v tobě,
ten s láskou setká se
v nádherném hrobě.
Ach, Tádžmahal!
Mám taky otázku.
Kde moje Mumtáz
dneska se ztratila?
Snad včera odešla
do červánků.
\ev
\endlangs
\aruna
\firstlang
\bv{मेरी रोशनी}
कुछ प्रकाशवर्षों तक
पहुँचती रहेगी
मेरी रोशनी
तुम तक
तब भी
जब
नहीं रहेगा मेरा अस्तित्व
उस रोशनी को ढूँढते
जब
पहुँचोगे मंजिल तक
मैं बदल चुकी होऊँगी
एक ब्लैकहोल में
फिर
तुम
ना पहुँच सकोगे मुझ तक
न
वापिस जा सकोगे
कहीं भी
इस असीम ब्रह्मांड में…
\ev
\secondlang
\bv{Mé světlo}
Za několik světelných let
dotkne se
mé světlo
tebe,
až tehdy,
kdy
existovat nebudu.
Když budeš hledat to světlo,
až
svého cíle dojdeš,
již proměněna budu
v černou díru.
Pak
ty
nebudeš se moci mě dotknout
ani
zpět jít moci nebudeš,
nikam,
v tomto neomezeném vesmíru…
\ev
\endlangs
\clearpage
\tableofcontents
|
Set the viewing mode to facing pages, center first when viewing the sample in PDF.
bilinpoe.zip, 8 KiB.