[texhax] Can TeX fix word and line the way I want?

[Philip TAYLOR [PC87S-O/XP]]

> The problem is that Sinhalese alphabet is not as the
> same width as English alphabet, so words in a line of
> Sinhalese alphabet will be put into the new line
> automatically by TeX. How can I tell TeX to adjust the
> two documents until words of difference alphabet were
> lined exactly the same?

Pretty difficult, I would have thought.  It seems to me
that the best approach will be to have two source files,
one "English.tex", the other "Sinhalese.tex", each containing
a single word per line.  Where a word is preceded by, followed
by, or surrounded by, puncuation, that punctuation should
be on the same line as the word to which it applies.  

You would then read one record from each file, and append
each to its corresponding internal buffer; if the total
width of the two buffers plus the gutter then exceeded the
measure, you would undo the append operation, flush
the two buffers, and then start the buffers afresh with
the two carried-over words.

Of course, you would need to make provision for material
other than words to appear in each of the files, to allow
formatting and other commands to be interpolated.

Philip Taylor