a problem with vertical spacing in bidipoem traditional poem and eledmac

Question

I'm making my first attempt to typeset an Arabic poem in two columns using bidipoem in eledmac.

All is going well--except I cannot adjust the vertical space between the lines without messing everything up. Either the spacing is too compact, i.e. the diacritics in Arabic run together, or the line-numbering in eledmac goes haywire (and the Arabic text gets bunched up in strange ways.)

Is there a simple way to add a small amount of vertical space between lines in bidipoem traditionalpoem?

\documentclass[12pt, letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage{xltxtra}
\usepackage{eledmac}
\usepackage{polyglossia}
\usepackage{bidipoem}
\usepackage[Kashida]{xepersian}
\XeTeXlinebreakskip = 0pt plus 5pt
\setmainlanguage{english}
\setotherlanguage{arabic}
\setmainfont{Brill}
\newfontfamily\arabicfont[Script=Arabic, Scale=1.5]{Amiri}
\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\beginnumbering
\begin{Arabic}
\pstart
\begin{traditionalpoem*}
ماذَا يقُولُ الأديبُ فِيمَا & تَرْكِيبُهُ مُنْتَهَى الحُزُوم        
منْ سَبْعَةٍ جُمِعَتْ لديهِ & تُعَدُّ من صنعَةِ الحكيمِ
\end{traditionalpoem*}     
\pend
\end{Arabic}
\end{document}

The real problems start to appear in the second to last line where the diacritics of the upper and lower lines are running into one another. Is there a way that I can separate the lines from one another and not mess up the line numbering and spacing?

Answer 1

One way to get out of this is to forget typesetting Arabic verse with bidipoem. As a provisional solution, I would suggest this (in which arabtex is used: adapt if you prefer unicode Arabic):

1. put this in your preamble: % Arabic verse \setstanzaindents{0,0} \setcounter{stanzaindentsrepetition}{1} \newlength{\baytwidth} \setlength{\baytwidth}{.3\textwidth} \newcommand{\bayt}[2]{\centering% \makebox[\baytwidth][s]{\ta[fullvoc]{#2}}% {\hspace{20pt}}% \makebox[\baytwidth][s]{\ta[fullvoc]{#1}}}

   2. Then in your document, at the appropriate places (this is an example for the astanza environment; adapt for stanza): \begin{astanza} \bayt{yasqIkahA man banI 'l-`abAdi ra^sA}% {munta__|si__buN `I__|duhu 'il_A 'l-'a.ha__|di}\&[\footnotesize(\ta{al-munsari.hu})\hfill\null] \end{astanza}

\bayt{}{} takes two arguments: the first one is for the ṣadr, and the second is for the ʿaǧuz. You may even, if necessary, redefine baytwidth which is set by default to 0.3\textwidth.

The example above gives you this:

Of course, you may insert any kind of critical note into each or both of the \bayt{}{} arguments.