Dear list,
for better or worse, I'm trying to typeset Arabic poetry in ConTeXt
after having become fed up with LaTeX for a variety of reasons. Arabic
script itself is not a problem and I already love how easy it is to use
whatever font you like and how clean ConTeXt seems to be in its design.
What is giving me trouble, though, is the face that traditionally,
poetry needs to be typeset in two columns. Using an English poem for an
example, it'd look a little bit like this:
Said Rich Accetta-Evans:
1 My poem delights me 2 My poem is mine
3 It is like fresh bread 4 When I bake it myself
5 It is like my son 6 The day he was born
[...]
This is to be read in the order of the numbers, so "columns" or
"simplecolumns" won't work (I think).
The second problem is the way in which Arabic needs to be justified,
namely not by adjusting the space between words, but instead by
adjusting the connecting line between letters:
قال أبو الطيب أحمد بن الحسين المتنبّي
أنـا الـذي نـظر الأعمى إلـى أدبي وأسمعـت كـلماتــي مـن به صمم
كم تـطلبون لـنا عيبًـا فــيعجزكم ويكره المجد ما تأتـون والكرم
ما أبعـد العيب والنقصان عن شرفي أنا الثّريا وذان الشيب والهرم
[...]
I couldn't find any info on either of these two questions through the
documentation or through Google (although I might have been looking for
the wrong keywords). Any comments are appreciated! :-)
With best regards,
J. R. Schmid
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