What packages help with typesetting settings specific to religious books?

Question

I'm looking to reprint and publish older religious books from the 19th century and earlier.

Such books usually have features not typically found in most books, and I'm finding it difficult to manually reproduce them using plain LaTeX features.

Namely:

1. The entire book is divided into multiple "books"
2. Each book has a heading above its first chapter, similar to a chapter heading
3. The \title{} of the entire book is also displayed above the first \book{} heading
4. Certain paragraphs are numbered incrementally, similar to Bible verses
5. Sometimes the "verse" markers are in the margin instead of inline with the text (not depicted below)
6. Standard margin sizes for paperback books of e.g. 6" x 9"

To clarify point #3, if the overall book was called "Imitation of Christ", i.e. \title{Imitation of Christ}, and was divided into 4 untitled "books" (i.e. via \book{}), then the top of the first page with book content should say "Imitation of Christ", the next line should say "Book 1", the next line should say "Chapter 1".

To give a concrete example of all these points, take these two versions of the same page:

Are there any packages which specifically help with any of these, or ought they each to be solved manually using less specific packages?

I'm currently using memoir and microtype.

Answer 1

The memoirclass provides automatically \book and \chapter divisions, so the main issue is setting up the formatting to the way you like them. Verses in the bible are functionally equivalent to sections, so you can use the \section for your verses. But since you can rename commands easily, you can create a \verse command that is \section underneath, and keep the markup semantic.

Here's a mockup of the Bible to get you started. Since it is likely that you will be using nice fonts, I would compile this with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX, which allows you to use any OpenType or TrueType font on your system. (Make sure your source file is UTF-8 encoded.)

The standard \book command starts a new page, so you would need to change that appropriately. I haven't added anything for the header/footer, but you should be able to do that yourself by following the memoir manual.

The code the the margin number is adapted from the memoir manual. I have added code in the \printbooktitle command to save the name of the book so that it can be reused in the \chapter formatting. Finally by using \let\verse\section we can keep the markup semantic: \verse is now identical to whatever \section.

% !TEX encoding = UTF-8 Unicode
% !TEX TS-program = XeLaTeX
\documentclass[oneside]{memoir} 
% due to a bug in memoir (as of 2015/8/24) [twoside] option will give a spurious space
% this will be fixed as memoir gets updated
\counterwithin{section}{chapter}
\chapterstyle{section}
\newcommand*{\thebooktitle}{}
\renewcommand*{\printbooktitle}[1]{\gdef\thebooktitle{#1}\booktitlefont #1}
\renewcommand*{\printchapternum}{\chapnumfont\thebooktitle\ \thechapter}
\renewcommand{\thesection}{\arabic{section}}
\newcommand{\marginbox}[1]{%
   \parbox[t][0pt]{6em}{\bfseries\huge\raggedleft\leavevmode #1}}
 \newcommand{\marginhead}[1]{%
   {\llap{\marginbox{#1}\kern1em}}}
 \setsecindent{0em}
 \setaftersecskip{0em}
 \setsecheadstyle{\marginhead}
\let\verse\section
\abnormalparskip{6pt}
\begin{document}
\mainmatter
\book{Genesis}
\chapter{}
\verse{}In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth. Now the earth was formless and
empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep,
and the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters.

And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was
light. God saw that the light was good, and he
separated the light from the darkness. God called
the light ‘day’, and the darkness he called
‘night’. And there was evening, and there was
morning – the first day.

And God said, ‘Let there be a vault between the
waters to separate water from water.’ So God made
the vault and separated the water under the vault
from the water above it. And it was so. God called
the vault ‘sky’. And there was evening, and there
was morning – the second day.

And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be
gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’
And it was so. God called the dry ground ‘land’,
and the gathered waters he called ‘seas’. And God
saw that it was good.

\bigskip\ldots

\verse{} Thus the heavens and the earth were
completed in all their vast array.

By the seventh day God had finished the work he
had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested
from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh
day and made it holy, because on it he rested from
all the work of creating that he had done.

\end{document}