I have ~250 poems to typeset, consisting of ~40 verses each. 99% are in this form:
line 1
line 2
line 3
line 4
line 5
line 6
line 7
line 8
...
The "source" of each poem is a PDF file which I use to copy / paste into a plain text file.
Now the task is to format these poems while avoiding too much markup. I could do this:
\begin{verse}
line 1 \\
line 2 \\
line 3 \\
line 4 \\
\end{verse}
\begin{verse}
line 5 \\
line 6 \\
line 7 \\
line 8 \\
\end{verse}
But I much prefer not adding \begin{verse}
and \end{verse}
around each verse and I would like to avoid the double backslash at the end of each line. What can I do?
Some "rules"
- No page break is allowed inside a 4 line verse
- I want to avoid markup, but if it's not possible, its OK to add markup
- All exceptions are handeld manually
- No other special formatting is required (each of the four lines are flush left and ragged right, no automatic line breaking
- Some poems should be mulitcolumn, if feasible
- Each poem is in its own file, having a
\title{...}
and a\date{...}
before it starts (I could put this somewhere else though).
\obeylines
could be used to avoid those\\
s