Boxes and Latin blocks

1. Boxes#

A line that starts with > goes into a box: a tinted panel across the page. Every following line that starts with > goes into the same box. It is not a quotation, as it is in other Markdown: it is the studio’s way of setting something apart — a rule to remember, a table of endings, an aside.

> **The six vowels.** Persian writes its three long vowels with letters> and usually leaves the three short ones out.>> - long ā, i, u: آب *āb* water, سیب *sib* apple, روز *ruz* day> - short a, e, o: شب *šab* night, کتاب *ketāb* book, گل *gol* flower

A box holds anything a document holds: paragraphs, lists, tables, headings, pictures and recordings, formulas, exercises — and another box, written with a second >. What is inside is read exactly as a document is, after the > at the start of each line is taken off.

> ### Endings>> | Person | Ending |> |---|---|> | I | -am |> | you | -i |>> > A box in a box: [تو]{teal} *to* is the familiar you.

A few rules follow from that:

• Every line needs its >, the blank ones inside the box too (a lone >). A line without one ends the box; it is not carried in, as some Markdown would.
• A ## heading in a box is a numbered section like any other, and listed in the contents; a # heading in a box is dropped.
• A box that starts with > --- takes the lines down to the next > --- for a front matter of its own, and drops them. Start a box with something else.
• A footnote defined inside a box is one of the document’s notes, and may be cited from anywhere.

On paper a box is a tinted panel a little narrower than the text; in a PDF printed Black and white, a white one in a thin black frame.

2. Latin blocks#

A paragraph written entirely as […]{la} is a Latin block: prose set apart as a block of its own, that can be aligned, tinted, and narrowed and moved sideways like a picture. It is the mirror of […]{tl}: where that one sets a stretch of the target language apart, this one sets apart the prose — the translation under a poem, the English beside a Persian passage, a note in the margin.

[*The children of Adam are limbs of one body, for in their creation theyshare one essence.* — Saadi, *Golestan*]{la align=center bg=sand width=80}[A narrower block, 70% of the column wide and 10% in from its left edge:room for a note beside the Persian.]{la width=70 offset=10 bg=lilac}

Unlike a {tl} stretch, the inside is ordinary Markdown: italics, bold, a word of the target language, a colour, a gloss, a link, a footnote all work in it. It may hold marks one level deep — […]{teal} inside is fine, a mark inside a mark inside it is not.

{ltr} is another name for {la}, for the same block:

[The same block, written with **ltr**: a note set apart, tinted rose.]{ltr bg=rose width=80 offset=10}

Its options#

align places the text inside the block; offset places the block. A width under 10, or over 100, is taken as 10 or 100, and an offset beyond −100 or 100 as −100 or 100; whatever the numbers, the block’s left edge stops a quarter of the column beyond either edge of it.

[This text is set to the right of a full-width block.]{la align=right}[A block half the column wide, pushed to the middle, its text centred.]{la width=50 offset=25 align=center bg=rose}

Its rules#

• It must be the whole paragraph. […]{la} inside a sentence is not read: the brackets and the braces show as typed. (Inside a line the prose is Latin already.)
• It may run over several lines, like the long form of {tl}: the opening [ may stand on a line of its own and the closing ]{la} on another, as long as no blank line and no line that starts a block of its own comes between them.
• In the reading view and the editor’s preview, a click on a Latin block opens the layout panel pictures have — width, shift, alignment and tint — and writes what you choose into the braces. The editor’s block button wraps the selected text in […]{la} (the long form when it spans lines).

On paper a Latin block is set at the same place as on the screen, tinted where it is tinted — the two renderers compute its place alike.