[Tex/LaTex] Right-aligned line-break with long verses in verse

frenchhorizontal alignmentline-breakingverse

I'm happily using the verse environment to typeset French poetry.
However, I'm unsatisfied with the behavior of long-line breaks (when the verse is too long to fit on the page).

The verse behavior is to do: 

Most of verses are short
here is another
foo bar bar foo long things will at one moment
      break on another line
another short

What French typesetting convention requires is: 

Most of verses are short
here is another
foo bar bar foo long things will at one moment
                          [break on another line
another short

It's to say long line remainder part right-aligned, starting with an opening bracket, while the normal lines are still left aligned.

Any ideas on how to change this behavior?

Best Answer

This can be set using TeX's paragraph settings as follows:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\newcommand*{\justlastragged}{%
\leftskip=0pt plus 1fil
\rightskip=-\leftskip
\parfillskip=\leftskip
\parindent=0pt}
\begin{document}
\justlastragged
This is a short poem line to see\\
what is this?

\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

The image below shows the result.

enter image description here

To enter the break and have an automatic "[" inserted use the following short definition:

\def\c[{\\\relax[$\!$}

You can use it as follows:

\justlastragged
This is a short poem line to see\c[ 
what is this?

Edit:

A different method closer to what the OP wants:

\documentclass{article}
\def\X{\rightskip0pt \leftskip=0pt \parfillskip=0pt plus 1.0fil}
\long\def\B#1\par{%
\par
\rightskip0pt plus 1pt
\leftskip=0pt plus 2fill
\parfillskip=0pt  [#1{\par}\X}
\parindent0pt

\begin{document}

\hsize3in
Another short line to test what is happening \B this is a  test

Some more test to just see what is happening here\B Testing another stanza

Testing etc 
\end{document}

Ultimately the best method might be the one commented by Barbara, where one makes the space character active, but that is a job for after Christmas! The second method works well, but one has to be careful with the \hsize to get it to the right value to make the poems look right.

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