Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Two different languages side by side

[wcapio]

Hi folks,

I am typesetting a thesis that includes quite a lot of quotes from the Hebrew Bible. There's a few principles I do not fully understand though.

I work with xelatex (texlive, windows and linux). I have a series of poems of various widths and lengths I want to typeset. The english text should be on the left, the Hebrew on the right.

My questions:

- should I put every poem in a tabular and try to vertically align the tabulars to top? If so, how come my Hebrew tabular does not take the {lrc} commands, but needs p{5cm} commands? Should I make a new columnstyle?

- should I use minipages and align these to the top?

My basic problem is alignment. I want the Hebrew and English the one next to the other. As the width of the text varies, I want the environment to be flexible.

Looking for some ideas here...

I have the following minimal example:

Code: Select all

Code, edit and compile here:

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\documentclass[11pt, oneside, a4paper]{book} %or koma: scrreprt
\usepackage{bidi}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newfontfamily{\hebrewfont}[Script=Hebrew, Scale=MatchUppercase]{SBL Hebrew}
\newenvironment{poem}{\footnotesize\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{p{8,5cm}}}{\end{tabular}\end{center}} % CENTERED
\newenvironment{Hbpoem}{\begin{center}\begin{tabular}{p{8,5cm}}}{\end{tabular}\end{center}} %
\begin{document}
\lipsum
\begin{Hbpoem}
\raggedleft\RLE{\hebrewfont 
כַּמָּה נֵר־רְשָׁעִים יִדְעָךְ }\\
\RLE{\hebrewfont 
 וְיָבֹא עָלֵימוֹ אֵידָם 
}\\
\RLE{\hebrewfont 
חֲבָלִים יְחַלֵּק בְּאַפּוֹ
}\end{Hbpoem}
\begin{poem}
\footnotesize How often is the lamp of the wicked put out? \\
How often does calamity come upon them? \\
How often does God distribute pains in his anger (verse ref)?
\end{poem}
\lipsum
\end{document}
 
 
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Run LaTeX here

help will be appreciated!
Walter

[frabjous]

I would use the parcolumns package. See its documentation for how to use it.

[wcapio]

Thanks 4 the reply

The disadvantages I can see in parcolumns are

1. it is designed for full textwidth (so if I'm right it requires a minipage every time). I want to type as little as possible (for instance, by using a newcolumnstyle? [one that I can align right, use \RLE from the bidi package and set the font in one go]

2. it is meant to set the lines on the same level. this causes the english text to have something like 1,3 interlinear... Not nice...

suggestions?

[localghost]

Then just try the parallel package. Therein I see no problem for what you want to do. The manual has the necessary details.


Best regards and welcome to the board
Thorsten