Line feed without carriage return

[josemoya]

Hello!

In traditional Spanish poetry we use form-feed without line-feed to mark a change of paragraph in the middle of a verse:

Unos hombres sin más destino que
apuntalar las ruinas.
                      Romper el mar
en el mar, como un himen inmenso,

(Example from Blas de Otero: Pido la paz y la palabra)

In Spanish drama this is even harder to do, since there is a character name between the first and second part of the verse and the pre:

               JUAN
¿Estamos listos?
               LUIS 
                 Estamos
              JUAN
Como quien somos cumplimos.

(Example from José Zorrilla: Don Juan Tenorio)

While this can be easily accomplished in wordperfect (at least 5.x to 12.x) using vertical jumps, or in a ANSI console-mode text file using ESC[1B, (ESC[s Character name ESC[u ESC[1B ESC[1B on the drama example), most current word processors require to either use hardcoded spaces or tabs (as I did in the preformatted text, above).

Is there a way (maybe a macro) to do this without hardcoded spaces or tabs, so we can resize text if needed?

(EDIT: I edited the preformated texts in notepad to put the right amount of spaces).
Thank you.

[LeroyG]

Maybe Direct Cursor Mode could help a bit.

[keme1]

There is the option to vertically offset characters from current baseline. This is the same mechanism used for super-/subscripts.
See if you can use this (14.5 KB) (utilizing the LowerOnce and LowerTwice character styles in attached file).

This workaround inserts an offset away from baseline, it does not break the line to introduce a new baseline, so …

• you would need another style if you need more than two drops
• after a line wrap, the text does not revert to baseline
• copy/paste to other platforms will “flatten” the line again

IOW, some manual fiddling is still required. Advantages are that the text flow is maintained, and the linefeed stepping can be adjusted. I set it to 100% per step, but when nothing will be on the line above, somewhere between 85%-95% may be sensible (looks more “connected” and saves some space).

[ajlittoz]

Unfortunately, no.

There is no provision for such a function.

The only workaround is to set a specific tab stop. Considering the high variation of this position, I suggest you set it as direct formatting (because you can’t define a fixed position which could be configured in a paragraph style). Then in a verse you can use line break (Shift+Enter) followed by Tab (or several if you have several positions in the same paragraph). In drama, every line is a separate paragraph, you need to type Tab’s only.

The whole process is manual. Should the preceding half-verse be modified, you must edit the tab stop position.

[josemoya]

	ajlittoz April 27

Unfortunately, no.

There is no provision for such a function.

I guessed that was the case. It is a pity that document standards design (HTML, ODT) didn’t provision for classic literary texts, as the long abandoned SGML did.

In drama, every line is a separate paragraph, you need to type Tab’s only.

Not really. In some classic plays such as Don Juan Tenorio, each line is a verse (lines rhyme), and a paragraph is composed by many lines:

Por dondequiera que fui,
la razón atropellé,
la virtud escarnecí,
a la justicia burlé
y a las mujeres vendí.
Yo a las cabañas bajé,
yo a los palacios subí,
yo los claustros escalé
y en todas partes dejé
memoria amarga de mí.

(10 lines, 2 sentences, one paragraph)

[ajlittoz]

@josemoya

Not really. In some classic plays such as Don Juan Tenorio, each line is a verse (lines rhyme), and a paragraph is composed by many lines

Good practice in Writer mandates to keep the logical or semantic structure of text. When you have a paragraph, it must translate to a Writer paragraph (which extends from one Enter to the next Enter. Verse break is translated into a line break encoded as Shift+Enter. You can see the difference after enabling View>Formatting Marks.

But nothing in the Tenorio’s example you give contradicts my statement. You must only be consistent with paragraph and line breaks. They are different and have different effects. Don’t mistake one for the other.

@erAck

Looks like using separate paragraph styles with different indentation

I didn’t suggest this approach because this would result in excessively many paragraph styles because you can’t predict the position of the break. It can be anywhere in a line. And there remains the issue of editing which may change word flow and consequently require a change in next paragraph style to remain aligned with the last line end.

In addition, the correct setting is not Before text but First Line Indent because only the first line is affected.

[erAck]

@ajlittoz

this would result in excessively many paragraph styles because you can’t predict the position of the break

Then I didn’t even understand the original problem…

Later… oh yes, the next paragraph should start in the same column where the previous one ended.
That might be solvable using a monospace font and direct cursor (mouse click inserting spaces on a line as needed). But awkward anyway…

[erAck]

Looks like using separate paragraph styles with different indentation before text (on Indents & Spacing tab) would be the way to go. In the Stylist (F11) create a new style based on the Default Paragraph Style and modify to liking. Maybe setting Next style to a desired paragraph style (e.g. Default) could be helpful so hitting Enter switches to that other style. The created style then can be assigned to a shortcut, Tools → Customize, select key combination, in Category pick Styles → Paragraph, from Function select the style you created.

[joshua4]

This is short of a perfect answer, but I had good luck typing the poem/play into a one-column table. Each line easily either wrapped or I could Tab to the next line. Then I went back to the offset lines and used Table>Split cells, marked and slid the text over from the left cell to the new right cell, then just used the table double-headed adjuster arrow to slide the offset line to where I wanted it.

Unfortunately these adjustments won’t survive a font change very well, but I’d rather mess with them than tab stops.

Perhaps a Writer macro expert knows how to get the width metric of text and could write a macro to scan for two-cell lines and set them automatically…perhaps even dance around intervening centered lines.

I did check Fountain screenwriting markdown and didn’t see any options there. It might be something to propose to the Fountain project, though, if they don’t have a solution for it already. Then perhaps BetterFountain would pick it up, and you could do your poetry in Visual Studio.

SpanishPoetry.odt (18.2 KB)

[josemoya]

Sorry for the late answer.
That is the approach used by the lead digital library of Spanish, cervantesvirtual.com
But it results in horrid texts when you cut and paste from it, or when you project texts over a big screen in a classroom, since cell size is fixed to a pixel size, and font-size is too.

[joshua4]

Well, fonts changes are going to be problematic for sure. You might be able to strengthen against oddities in projectors/monitors by first exporting to PDF, then showing the PDF.

I did have another idea: Have you considered migrating poetry works to Latex? Or perhaps you already use Latex.

The verse package
https://ctan.org/pkg/verse

can do what you want, apparently, with just the “>” symbol…looking very quickly. See the example here called Mathematics on page 11:

verse.pdf

[josemoya]

Hi!

Thanks for the hint with latex.
I use Latex to insert grammar diagrams in documents. But, after my first experiments with Tex/latex on Slackware back in 1996, I never installed a local copy again.

I suspect poetry package will not be installed in codecogs… So I’ll try local latex again.

Atentamente,
José G. Moya Y.

P.D. Escribo desde un móvil. Disculpe posibles erratas.