[OS X TeX] poetry packages

[Michael Sharpe]

On Aug 20, 2013, at 11:21 PM, Scot Mcphee <scot.mcphee at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> I am looking for fairly easy to use poetry package. Anyone know of any? Especially one that that can print line numbers of the poem. I've tried verse and poetrytex but both are inadequate. The verse environment is too simple and poetry has a lot of options for a whole lot of stuff I don't need and nothing around those I do.
> 
> I'm currently reliant on 'verbatim', which dies on long lines (I have to manually split them), and of course, uses a horrible typewriter font.
> 
> The line numbers have to start at arbitrary points (I'm quoting arbitrary sections from long epic poems) and only number every 5th line (i.e. where modulo 5 is equal to 0, not every fifth line from the starting line). Here for example is a block of verse quoted with hand formatting in verbatim (Vergil, Aeneid, Book 4 lines 129 - 142):
> 
> \begin{verbatim}
>    Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit.
> 130 it portis iubare exorto delecta iuventus,
>    retia rara, plagae, lato venabula ferro, 
>    Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum vis. 
>    reginam thalamo cunctantem ad limina primi 
>    Poenorum exspectant, ostroque insignis et auro
> 135 stat sonipes ac frena ferox spumantia mandit. 
>    tandem progreditur magna stipante caterva 
>    Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo; 
>    cui pharetra ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum, 
>    aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem.
> 140 nec non et Phrygii comites et laetus Iulus 
>    incedunt. ipse ante alios pulcherrimus omnis 
>    infert se socium Aeneas atque agmina iungit.
> \end{verbatim}
> 
> Any suggestions or ideas? I've also got the additional problem of the English translations, which are inevitably of a longer line length (if you know Latin, and you know Latin poetry, you'll know it's incredibly compressed, textually **).
> 
> Oh, it also should hopefully support Unicode.
> 
> thanks
> scot

I think you must have been speaking about LaTeX's native verse environment. The package by the same name is much more capable, and seems to do what you want. For example,

% need \usepackage{verse} in the preamble
\poemlines{5} numbers every fifth line
\begin{verse}
\verselinenumbersleft
\vrightskip -.5in % position of number
\setverselinenums{129}{130} %first line is 129, 130 is first numbered line
Oceanum interea surgens Aurora reliquit.\\
it portis iubare exorto delecta iuventus,\\
retia rara, plagae, lato venabula ferro,\\
Massylique ruunt equites et odora canum vis.\\ 
reginam thalamo cunctantem ad limina primi\\ 
Poenorum exspectant, ostroque insignis et auro\\
stat sonipes ac frena ferox spumantia mandit.\\ 
tandem progreditur magna stipante caterva\\ 
Sidoniam picto chlamydem circumdata limbo;\\ 
cui pharetra ex auro, crines nodantur in aurum,\\ 
aurea purpuream subnectit fibula vestem.\\
nec non et Phrygii comites et laetus Iulus\\ 
incedunt. ipse ante alios pulcherrimus omnis\\ 
infert se socium Aeneas atque agmina iungit.\\! % don't increment counter
\end{verse}

There is the issue that every line must be ended by \\, and that can be handled either by copying the original text to, say, TextWrangler to replace all \r by //\r, or by writing an Applescript macro to do the same.

Michael