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In Renaissance typography, one often sees paragraphs end with a triangular "fade out", e.g.

triangular paragraph ending

Is there a clever way to do this in LaTeX? You can get an approximation with manual line breaks in a \centering block, but it's imperfect in many ways. A solution exists for a pure triangle using \shapepar, however, I cannot see how to merge this with the rest of the justified-aligned paragraph. Ideally the solution would not depend on ad-hoc tuning to the specific text.

Another previous answer using \shapepar exists, however, like before, it does not merge automatically with the preceding justified-aligned part of the paragraph---instead the widths are different, and the parameters defining the shape of the triangle must be fine-tuned to fix this. Subsequently, if we change even a single character within the triangle, we have to restart this painstaking job.

Further, it does not allow a page break within the formatted paragraph. I already know how to hack this together by tuning the previous solutions and manually starting a new paragraph at a "start point" that is after a non-broken word nearly at the end of a line before the triangle begins (e.g. we could end a paragraph after "Coniugem ama." in the image above.) But after this, we can't change the text in the entire justified paragraph without destroying it.

Is there a way to do this triangular alignment in a way which automatically merges with the justified part of the paragraph without ad-hoc tuning to the specific text, and which allows page breaks in that paragraph?

  • Could maybe adjust the line width/margins and let the line-breaking algorithm handle it? – Davislor Nov 15 '20 at 02:08
  • @barbarabeeton Thanks, but this is a terrible solution for several reasons, including that it requires extensive ad-hoc adjustments to get the actual paragraph width correct (which are broken and must be readjusted whenever the text is changed), and it also doesn't allow page breaks within the paragraph, so my example is impossible ("des videto" is in the middle of a sentence). I therefore consider my question very much unsolved and hope it is reopened. – theorarius Nov 15 '20 at 19:43
  • If you will edit your question to reference the one I cited, and explain clearly the reasons why it won't work in your case, I will vote to reopen. The need to allow for a page break is a good reason, but it isn't clear from the question as it stands. – barbara beeton Nov 15 '20 at 19:54
  • @barbarabeeton OK, I tried to do that, hope it is OK now. – theorarius Nov 15 '20 at 20:22

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