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I'd love to typeset a document where the inner margin follows a sinuous path. For example, like the one below (done in Scribus).

I tried wrapping the text around a curvy image set at the appropriate location, but that didn't work, obviously, since images are always rectangular, right?

I checked in the documentation of package geometry if one could define a \rightmargin that would be dependent on some other variable (like line-number), but I didn't find anything.

Google and tex.stackexchange searches for any number of combinations of relevant-sounding terms yielded nothing.

I'm ready to use luatex or whatever (ideally, I'd like to use microtype too). Any help much appreciated!

EDIT: Ideally the solution wouldn't require manual tuning, apart from giving the initial shape of the "curvy" margin. Indeed, I'd like to use it for a little book of about 60 pages. The problem with \shapepar (or \cutout, or even \parshape for that matter) is that it has to be fine-tuned for each individual paragraph, knowing beforehand the length of the text and the paragraph's position on the page (also, a paragraph split over two pages seems to be pretty tough to handle).

enter image description here

Christoph B.
  • 1,901
  • 2
    Have a look at the \parshape macro, which lets you use nearly arbitrarily shaped margin shapes. If you search this site for \parshape, you'll get quite a few hits. – Mico Dec 07 '13 at 21:03
  • 3
    Look up the shapepar package; here is an example http://tex.stackexchange.com/a/139744/21891. – jub0bs Dec 07 '13 at 21:08
  • Okay, thanks, I'll check these out. However, from the shapepar package documentation, it doesn't seem to be able to flow text from one page to the next, actually only applying paragraph by paragraph. – Christoph B. Dec 10 '13 at 10:31
  • "Relaunched" the question with a bounty since I'm not able to achieve any general layout with the above suggestions (see "EDIT" in message"). Thanks nevertheless for the pointers! – Christoph B. Jan 26 '14 at 14:45
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    You might look at flowfram but you don't seem to be able to use shaped paragraphs with the kind of frame I think you probably need. (But I do not really understand the documentation very well and I've only tried using it for a bit this evening. Hence it is worth your looking, I think.) – cfr Jan 26 '14 at 21:02
  • Thanks @cfr! I messed around with flowfram and jpgfdraw, but indeed, I could only get static and dynamic frames to adopt weird shapes (across multiple paragraphs, so that's a step forward!) which don't automatically flow onto new pages as required, whereas I think I'd need to put my text into a flow frame, since I really just want to do "standard" LaTeX with a wiggly margin. flowfram seems to be good when one knows ahead of time what text goes into such and such frame, and how many pages there will be in total (but at this rate, I might as well do it in Scribus... right?) – Christoph B. Jan 29 '14 at 13:01
  • Do you need to answer to be able to handle things like math, tables, and floats or is plain text enough? – StrongBad Jan 29 '14 at 21:18
  • @StrongBad Perhaps a little inline maths and a few small tables narrower than the shortest line's width, and at most a few stamp-sized images. The majority of the book is text (with chapters, sections, etc., some quote style environments) No footnotes, no margin notes, no fancy citations nor bibliography. Maybe a modest header. – Christoph B. Jan 29 '14 at 23:10

1 Answers1

5

This version tries to take into account the vertical spaces taken up by sections; might even work with figures, tables, etc... (untested).

sine margin page1 sine margin page2 sine margin page3 sine margin page4

\documentclass[a4paper]{article}

\def\LINESPERPAGE{45}
\usepackage[textheight=\LINESPERPAGE\baselineskip]{geometry}

\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{xinttools}% requires version 1.09m or later

% \edef\MOCKSINE {%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-3em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-4em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5.75em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-6em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5.75em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-4em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-3em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.25em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.25em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em}%
% {0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em}%
% }

% let's divide by two the sizes of the undulation.
\edef\MOCKSINE {%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2.875em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-3em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2.875em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.125em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.125em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-.5em}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em}%
}


\makeatletter

\edef\MCK@LINESPERPAGE {\the\numexpr \LINESPERPAGE\relax }

\def\MCK@LINECOUNT {0}

\def\SETUPPARSHAPE {%
  \xdef\MCK@tmpB {\the\numexpr \pagetotal/\baselineskip}%
  \ifnum\MCK@tmpA>\MCK@tmpB
  % assume we are on a new page. !!!Something more robust should be done here!!!
  \xdef\MCK@LINECOUNT
   {\the\numexpr\MCK@LINECOUNT+\MCK@tmpB-\MCK@tmpA+\MCK@LINESPERPAGE}%
  \else
  \xdef\MCK@LINECOUNT {\the\numexpr\MCK@LINECOUNT+\MCK@tmpB-\MCK@tmpA}%
  \fi
  \global\let\MCK@tmpA\MCK@tmpB   
  \edef\STARTINDEX {\the\numexpr\MCK@LINECOUNT+16-16*((\MCK@LINECOUNT+8)/16)}%
  \parshape 16 \xintListWithSep { }{\xintTrim \STARTINDEX\MOCKSINE}
               \xintListWithSep { }{\xintKeep \STARTINDEX\MOCKSINE} \relax
}

\def\STARTUNDULATIONS {\def\MCK@LINECOUNT {0}\def\MCK@tmpA {0}%
    \def\par {\oldpar \SETUPPARSHAPE }\SETUPPARSHAPE }
\def\STOPUNDULATIONS {\let\par\oldpar }
\makeatother

\let\oldpar\par
\AtBeginDocument {\STARTUNDULATIONS }

\begin{document}

\newcount\cnta
\cnta1
\loop

\section{This is a section}
\lipsum [\cnta-\numexpr\cnta+3\relax]
\section{This is another section}
\lipsum [\numexpr\cnta+3\relax-\numexpr\cnta+7\relax]

\advance\cnta 8
\ifnum\cnta < 50
\repeat
\end{document}

FIRST ANSWER

First two pages:

sine margin page 1 sine margin page 2

This will be broken by almost anything I guess. And \everypar is un-usable as it will also be often overwritten I am afraid.

\documentclass{article}
% \usepackage[english]{babel}
% \usepackage{blindtext}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{xinttools}% requires version 1.09m or later

\edef\MOCKSINE {%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-3em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-4em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5.75em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-6em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5.75em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-5em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-4em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-3em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.25em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-0.25em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-1em\relax}%
{0pt \the\dimexpr\textwidth-2em\relax}%
}

\def\LINECOUNT {0}

\def\SETUPPARSHAPE {%
 \xdef\LINECOUNT  {\the\numexpr\LINECOUNT+\prevgraf}%
 \edef\STARTINDEX {\the\numexpr\LINECOUNT+16-16*((\LINECOUNT+8)/16)}%
 \parshape 16 \xintListWithSep { }{\xintTrim \STARTINDEX\MOCKSINE}
              \xintListWithSep { }{\xintKeep \STARTINDEX\MOCKSINE} \relax
}


\let\oldpar\par
\AtBeginDocument {\def\par {\oldpar \SETUPPARSHAPE }

\begin{document}
\SETUPPARSHAPE 
\lipsum [1-20]
\end{document}

% problems with \blindtext
% \blindtext [10]
% I don't know why.
  • Merci! This is quite good! I'm not at all familiar with xinttools, so maybe this is a really simple question, but is it possible to adapt this behaviour to twoside layout, with the right hand side pages being just a mirror of what's here? Also, when I add sectioning commands, it doesn't take into account the space taken up by the section title: would it be complicated to adapt your solution to the "vertical" position of the line in the text, rather than its number? – Christoph B. Mar 11 '14 at 14:08
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    xinttools is used here essentially because I am familiar with it and needed a no hassle way to shift the paragraph shape specification modulo 16, depending on the line count, thus xinttools is just a layer of utility macros for TeX programming having nothing to do a priori with page layout. For two side layout, page 2 should match page1 by transparency? For vertical position the TeX primitive \pagetotal could help. I will give a try when I find time. I assume you still ask for continuity from one page to the next, not assuming the page contains a whole number of undulations. –  Mar 11 '14 at 16:57
  • Matching by transparency would be great! Thanks for your time and efforts. – Christoph B. Mar 12 '14 at 13:07