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Specifically, I'd like to have one line have the English, while another has the Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek/Latin/etc, and possibly (if any program has this capacity) an additional line/lines for extra context (i.e. Peter/Πετρος/Rock, or verb conjugations). The various lines should line up their respective words, with "Claudius/Κλαύδιος" having enough space after them that "Galenus (Galen)/Γαληνός" starts at an equal spot. Footnotes or marginal annotations are also necessary. As little time as possible should be spent manually adjusting the formatting, with it still being readable.

For a "formatted" version of the imagined results, subbing dashes for spaces (word order is nonsense; was pressed for time): 

Galenus (Galen)--Claudius--Rocks  
Γαληνός----------Κλαύδιος--πετρω  
nom. sg.---------nom. sg.--voc. dl.

In this instance I had to type in the spaces myself, but I'm looking for a program that will do that for me. Another difficulty is making the different types of content align on new lines; doing this sort of text manually, then adjusting the margins, can give you: 

Galenus (Galen)--Claudius  
--Rocks Γαληνός----------  
Κλαύδιος--πετρω nom. sg.-  
--------nom. sg.--voc.   
dl.

Which is obviously not acceptable to the user's needs.

saiarcot895
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DisposableUsername
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  • what about latex? you probably would need a little time learning how to use it if you've never used it before, but I'm pretty sure it can do what you want. – fifaltra Jun 26 '15 at 08:23
  • The question is whether an editor can handle left to right text and right to left text in the same document. I assume a LTR paragraph can contain a RTL section. Just to get a better idea from it: Is support for LTR and RTL in the same line needed? Support for multiple switches in one line? Does a line have a direction itself? Can a sequence of RTL lines with short LTR intersections contain a line with no LTR? Is that a RTL line with LTR text only? Can we exclude top-down scripts? (I'm not jocing or cynical - I was just remembering a long explanation why someone did not even try) – Volker Siegel Jun 26 '15 at 13:10
  • Could you try to explain examples in the question? Maybe pictures of results you imagine or that are possible elsewhere? This is a topic with very hard problems, and very few users depending hard on it - so it's allways good to get some attention to it! – Volker Siegel Jun 26 '15 at 13:15
  • LaTeX is, despite the learning curve, one of your better options. Alternatively, you can use any word editor (LibreOffice), and use the ruler to specify where tabs should line up. This would solve your first requirement, but not the second. – saiarcot895 Jun 26 '15 at 22:48

2 Answers2

3

I've never used it myself, but it looks like mule is designed to handle this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MULE

MULE is the MULtilingual Enhancement to GNU Emacs.

MULE provides facilities not only for handling text written in many different languages (at least 42 character sets, 53 coding sets, 128 input methods, and 58 languages[1]), but in fact multilingual texts containing several languages in the same buffer.

user3113723
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There's a very simple answer to this: Use LibreOffice Calc! No spaces needed, everything goes into columns, RTL and LTR, Spell-checking, ... Everything you needed and more!

And you probably know how to use it already!

Fabby
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