First of all apologies for forgetting to put a subject on my original post!
On 2023-05-25 09:52, BPJ wrote:
> (Apologies to those who get cross-posts of this — I hope to reach as
> many as possible, and believe that there may be people here who have
> relevant experience.)
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> I'm looking for advice from people who have used LaTeX, preferably
> XeLaTeX but LuaLaTeX is interesting too,[1] to write a (“traditional”)
> reference grammar (or even better an historical reference grammar), and
> if so have you anything to share — code or pointers or examples? I will
> almost certainly mesh LaTeX and Pandoc so experiences from handling the
> issues mentioned below in that context are very welcome.
>
> I have tried to find something on CTAN but have come up empty handed,
> and googling “write [natural language] reference grammar with LaTeX” has
> proved useless.
>
> The first feature I will need is section numbers — “§ 42” style — which are
>
> - in the left margin against a paragraph;
> - possible to reference with links in the PDF;
> - preferably using a label since the actual numbers may be subject to
> change when adding/moving around parts;
> - with running § numbers (of first § on left page and (preferably)
> last § on right page) in the page headers;
> - independent of chapter/heading structure: a § number/label stands
> against a paragraph rather than a heading, and naturally a paragraph may
> or may not have one;
> - possibile to have indices — index rerum and index verborum for
> multiple languages — referring to § numbers rather than pages.
>
> So I think that more generally this is about
>
> - custom label/reference categories;
> - custom counters;
> - getting things into the (left) margin flush with the top of a paragraph;
> - getting custom things (involving counters) into page headers;
> - custom index formats, specifically indices referencing other numbers
> than page numbers.[2]
>
> I fully expect to have to set up most of this myself, and am willing to
> write external scripts to deal with aspects of it — preferred language
> Perl (which I have been using since the mid nineties) and I’m able and
> willing to use PerlTeX if convenient, since I’m a far better Perl than
> TeX programmer, although getting a grip on LaTeX solutions would be
> wonderful! :-) I also have Lua experience but as I'm using above-ASCII
> Unicode a lot Lua may be less useful. FWIW I have a good grip on how to
> do Unicode-aware/custom-order sorting in Perl and I have even written
> (slow) code to do Unicode-aware/custom-order sorting in Lua.
>
> [1] This involves needing to use system fonts and Unicode/UTF-8 encoded
> text using multiple scripts. Mostly Latin, IPA, Greek and some Cyrillic,
> but using some “exotic” Latin letters and combining marks.
>
> [2] This looks relevant: <https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/63674/93534
> <https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/63674/93534>>. Using memoir seems to
> be a good idea anyway.
>
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That looks promising, if it is worth the learning curve since there are a number of LaTeX packages which I already rely on which may not have a ready ConTeXt equivalent. How hard would it be to define a sort order for a new script, perhaps wholly or partly located in the/a PUA?