#Vertical Chinese (古籍)

HaTeX can set Chinese text vertically, in the manner of old books: columns read from top to bottom and from right to left, with old-style punctuation and two-line interlinear notes.

\begin{guji}[20]
洛陽伽藍記序

\begin{flushright}
魏撫軍府司馬楊衒之撰
\end{flushright}

三墳五典之說，\jiazhu{孔安國尚書序：伏犧、神農、黃帝之書，謂之三墳。}九流百代之言，……
\end{guji}

#guji: a manuscript-scroll page

\begin{guji}[n] … \end{guji} sets its content like a manuscript scroll (卷子本):

• Columns run from right to left, with n characters each (行款). n is 20 if it is left out.
• Rules: a thin rule between the columns (烏絲欄) and a double frame around the page, along the top and bottom (天頭、地腳).
• Paragraphs (separated by a blank line) start a new column.
• flushright puts its text at the foot of its column, as for an author's name or a date.
• Leaves: when the text is longer than one leaf, the runtime cuts it into leaves (頁). In guji each leaf is a sheet in the proportion --hx-guji-aspect (width to height; 4/3 by default, a landscape page like A4 turned sideways), its height set by the characters per column and its width rounded to whole columns; where the page has room for more than one, the sheets are set from right to left, wrapping onto the next row. Each sheet prints as one page. Set --hx-guji-aspect: 3/4 on .hatex-guji for upright sheets. In vertical the leaves are as wide as the page and stacked from top to bottom. Cuts fall between columns, never inside a note, and are made again when the window is resized. Every leaf has the same frame: the last one is not narrower, its text just ends and the ruled columns after it stay empty. To fill the last sheet well, try a few values of the characters per column. Without the runtime (plain HTML from parse), the text scrolls sideways instead.

#Punctuation (句讀)

Old books have no modern punctuation. A reader marks the end of a sentence with a small circle beside the character (句) and a pause with a dot (讀). Inside guji, you write modern punctuation as usual and it is shown the old way:

The marks take no room in the column, so each character stays in its place on the grid. The circle and dot are drawn by CSS; the original punctuation stays in the text, invisible, so copying the text still copies it. (Removed quotation marks are really gone.)

Because every ., ,, ; and : in a guji becomes a mark, keep maths and Latin text with punctuation out of guji.

#vertical: vertical text only

\begin{vertical}[n] … \end{vertical} uses the same vertical layout and column length, but without the rules, the frame or the punctuation changes. Use it for modern vertical text.

#\jiazhu: interlinear notes

\jiazhu{…} sets a note in two small lines inside one line of text (雙行小字夾注), as commentaries do in old editions. The command name comes from the CTAN jiazhu package.

• The note is half the size of the text, and its box is as long as half its characters, so two lines of note fill the space of one line of text.
• In guji, a note that doesn't fit in what is left of its column continues at the top of the next column, as in printed books, instead of leaving a gap. The runtime splits the note into pieces that each fit, and redoes this whenever the layout changes.
• \jiazhu also works in ordinary horizontal text, where the two lines sit inside the line of text.

#Styling

The first four can be set anywhere on or above the .hatex element. --hx-guji-pitch and --hx-guji-chars are set on the guji element itself, so a page must override them there:

.hatex { --hx-judou: #c0392b; --hx-guji-paper: #f7f0e1; }
.hatex .hatex-guji, .hatex .hatex-vertical { --hx-guji-pitch: 2.2em; }

The text is 1.3rem in size.

#Browser support

Vertical text uses CSS writing-mode: vertical-rl, which all current browsers support. The rules are a background gradient, which lines up with the columns as long as the font gives every character a full em square, as CJK fonts do.

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