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
\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}help will be appreciated!
Walter
