How do I write a book with two 'authors', one on all left pages and one on all right pages?

Question

I've used LaTeX for a while to write math articles, so I have a general idea how to use it, but I've never had to make my own document class, environment, or package.

I want to write a short story told from the two main characters' points of view, one appearing only of the left page and one only on the right. These two characters will each have their own formatting, which I assume I will be done using environments. Additionally, I would like to force certain paragraphs to line up and appear on opposite pages (e.g., when both authors are writing about the same event) using markers of some sorts.

I have no idea where I would even start with this, so my questions are:

How do I set up an two environments so they appear only on opposite pages?
And how do I set up markers to help align certain paragraphs or sections?

there are some ideas here (which is written as 2 column rather than 2 page but that's really a minor detail) http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/132563/two-columns-whose-content-is-positioned-relative-to-each-other/132625#132625 — David Carlisle, Jan 24 '14 at 00:19
In the worst case type both documents separately, split them with pdftk into separate pages and insert them into the final document alternatingly. — Uwe Ziegenhagen, Jan 24 '14 at 05:26
Welcome to TeX.SX! Usually, we don't put a greeting or a “thank you” in our posts. While this might seem strange at first, it is not a sign of lack of politeness, but rather part of our trying to keep everything very concise. Accepting and upvoting answers is the preferred way here to say “thank you” to users who helped you. — Martin Schröder, Jan 24 '14 at 09:51
This will be difficult with LaTeX: have a look at [tag:ConTeXt], I believe there's already a solution there. — Martin Schröder, Jan 24 '14 at 09:53

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 24 '14 at 00:08

3

The parallel package defines a Parallel environment, with a ‘p’ option, and \ParallelLText, ParallelRText, \ParallelPar which should do what you want if it's only text.

answered Jan 24 '14 at 00:08

Bernard

271,350

It seem like it'd be a bit of a hack to get my environments nested inside of this one, and feel like there might be a more clean way to do this. But, this is a good start. Thanks. – Eric Hartsuyker Jan 24 '14 at 00:33
Bernard, in the moment this is more a comment. Could you, please, add some content, for instance a \newenvironment definition? Note also pdfcolparallel from the oberdiek bundle, which makes several patches for parallel (andloads this in background before). – Speravir Jan 24 '14 at 02:00
1

@EricHartsuyker: Nothing needs to be nested here, it depends only on the environment definition. You can start the parallel environment inside of your definition. You only must know then, that you have to use the special commands inside of your environment. – Speravir Jan 24 '14 at 02:04

How do I write a book with two 'authors', one on all left pages and one on all right pages?

1 Answers1