Braces that span lines

[alerque]

Ran across this and it made me wonder: could we even pull this off if we wanted to? What changes would we have to make to get there?

[rjmunro]

In Unicode, there's a bunch of symbols for making these:

             ⎧ Top
For example  ⎨ Middle
             ⎩ Botttom

Unfortunately, the way they are rendered here, they don't join up. They are listed on this page: https://unicode-search.net/unicode-namesearch.pl?term=BRACKET

I'm not sure if using them would be part of the solution for this.

[simoncozens]

What are you reading?

Anyway, I would be tempted to render this as a three-column table, compute the height, and write out an SVG graphic to go in the middle column.

[alerque]

What are you reading?

OSINT Twitter.

Anyway, I would be tempted to render this as a three-column table, compute the height, and write out an SVG graphic to go in the middle column.

Are our tables robust enough for that yet? I remember giving up pretty quickly the last time I gave them a go. I'd be happy to know that's changed.

My initial thought was this would need some kind of grouping such as allowing vboxes to be assembled and pushed in a horizontal context. I also see we have a bunch of tangentially related issues waiting for something along those lines and they aren't very well cross referenced. I've never messed around with Github's "projects" before but it seems like it might be a way to organize this sort of thing.

[ctrlcctrlv]

I managed to do this using the characters.

The biggest problem is that there's seemingly no way to center a table. You need to use a script, or eyeball it. (Remember kids: Never spend 6 minutes doing something by hand when you can spend 6 hours failing to automate it.)

Relevant portion:

\define[command=mathfourtd]{\td{\font[family=MathJax_Size4]{\process}}}
\script[src=simpletable]
\script{
-- From sile-project/sile documentation/macros.xml
-- I think probably us users aren't supposed to be using this yet lol
local simpletable = SILE.require("simpletable")
simpletable.init(SILE.documentState.documentClass, {
  tableTag = "table",
  trTag = "tr",
  tdTag = "td"
})
}
...
\begin{table}%
\tr{\font[size=18pt,weight=400]\mathfourtd{\glue[width=4.15cm]⎛}\td{\glue[width=2.3cm]\cjk{\rubyA[reading=BĒNG]{孟}\rubyA[reading=HOK]{福}\rubyA[reading=LÊ]{黎}} }\mathfourtd{⎞}}
\tr{\mathfourtd{\glue[width=4.15cm]\rebox[width=0pt]{⎜}\rebox[width=0pt]{\lower[height=5pt]{⎜}}\raise[height=5pt]{⎜}}\td{\font[size=18pt,weight=400]\cjk{\glue[width=0.3cm]フレッド・ブレンナン}}\mathfourtd{\rebox[width=0pt]{\lower[height=5pt]{⎟}}\raise[height=5pt]{⎟} }}
\font[family=Inconsolata]
\tr{\mathfourtd{\glue[width=4.15cm]⎝}\td{\font[size=18pt,weight=400]copypaste\font[family=Android Emoji]📧\font[family=Inconsolata]kittens.ph}\mathfourtd{⎠}}
\end{table}
\bigskip

[Omikhleia]

Do you mean...

EDIT - Hints: No "maths". No weird "math characters". No "table" (but close to it). No "SVG" (in the stricter sense). No manual "tweaking / eyeballing" (but automation).

[alerque]

@Amikhleia This is like "show and tell" without the "show" you tease.

[Omikhleia]

No more teasing - with the modules from the above PR:

\parbox[valign=middle,width=20%lw]{\raggedright{\font[features=+smcp]{Civilian Central Wars}}}%
\hfill
\bracebox[bracewidth=0.8em]{\parbox[valign=middle,width=75%lw]{%
44. Spasm or Insensate War\par
43. Some Other Kinds of Controlled General War\par
42. Civilian Devastation Attack\par
41. Augmented Disarming Attack\par
40. Countervalue Salvo\par
39. Slow-Motion Countercity War\par
}}

[Omikhleia]

So my full answer to the above question would now be:

For the general use case:

• Use at least SILE 0.14.x
• Install 3rd-party package: luarocks install --server=https://luarocks.org/dev ptable.sile
• And then, in a document, use the code from my previous comment.

As an alternative for a table of contents (as said once earlier, kudos to @alerque for having brought such an example above to my eyes, I liked it some much that I used it in my own book made with SILE)

• Use at least SILE 0.14.x
• Install 3rd-party package: luarocks install --server=https://luarocks.org/dev fancytoc.sile (it will install the above too as a dependency)
• And then, in a document, \fancytableofcontents (possibly with optional parameters, see the package doc.)

Is there anything from the question that would require this issue to remain opened?