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When I use Relepar to put in parrallel a text in english and its translation in french, the consecutive paragraphs in french, which use more lines than the corresponding paragraphs in english, are not separated enough (as we are accustomed in normal LaTeX). The only very unsatisfactory solution I have found is to introduce an additional blank line at the end of each french paragraph. The naive idea to introduce a vertical space at the end of each paragraph does not work.

Does this come from the use of minipages by Reledpar for each paragraph ? Is there a way to fix this visually strange behavior ?

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  • In most typographical traditions, paragraphs are not separated by an empty line, but only by an indent in the new one. Actually normal LaTeX only does this if if needs to accomodate superfluous vertical space with the option \raggedbottom (when all extra space is moved to the bottom of the page) you'll see that there is no empty line. As a reledmac user I would consider it strange if its standard behaviour wouldn't be the same. – Florian Oct 31 '16 at 19:21
  • If you want the extra line, you could try whether one of the options discussed here works with reledpar. – Florian Oct 31 '16 at 19:24
  • The proposed solutions to introduce \usepackage {parskip} or \usepackage [indent]{parskip} in the preamble don't work. Apparently the only solution is rely on indentation of the first line of each paragraph to have a visual separation betwen paragraph. It is strange because normal LaTeX offer the choice between the two approaches. – Emile Oct 31 '16 at 20:21
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    For the presentation of text translation I far prefer the skip of some vertical space between paragraphs because it is already what we have for the paragraphs in english which occupy less lines than there french counterparts : french paragraphs have no vertical separation and english paragraphs have a separation : it hurts my sense of visual balance. – Emile Oct 31 '16 at 20:28
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You could do \AtEveryPstart{\vspace{\baselineskip}} to insert a blank line automatically between pstart.

However, note that, normally, paragraphs are not separated by a blank line and reledmac is not an exception.

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  • In normal LaTex it is easy to get the behavior I am looking for with the following two lines in the preamble : \setlength{\parskip}{\smallskipamount} \setlength{\parindent}{0pt} This is the solution !! Thank you again. So it is may be not the true normal mode of LaTeX but it is a classic variant. Now I understand that with the presence of minipages in Reledmac/Reledpar il can not be controled in the same manner. – Emile Oct 31 '16 at 21:18
  • yes, but that is not the default behavior. – Maïeul Oct 31 '16 at 21:19
  • There was a mess in my previous message... So let me say that your solution answers very well my expectations ! Thank you again. I am happy with the visual balance. – Emile Oct 31 '16 at 21:26
  • reledmac/reledpar does not use minipage, but vbox… – Maïeul Oct 31 '16 at 21:28
  • Ok, so why have I this idea of minipages ? May be from the previous versions ? – Emile Oct 31 '16 at 21:31

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