Cfrgtkky

I need to combine lettrines, explicit linebreaks and hanging indents for whatever chunk of text ends up being longer than one typeset line.

For the sake of semiautomatic text-production I'd very much prefer just to have to deal with one (custom) linebreaking command (lb in the example).

When using newline the lettrines are displayed correctly (not overwritten by the following line), but everything apart from the first line of the whole text will be set hanging.

With par the hanging indent is correct but not for the lines affected by the lettrine:

documentclass[11pt,a5paper]{article}



usepackage[showframe]{geometry}





usepackage{lettrine}



%newcommand{lb}{newline}

newcommand{lb}{par}



setlength{leftskip}{5cm}

setlength{parindent}{-5cm}







begin{document}



A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

lettrine{A}{} short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular text but way too long to be on one line, so we need to break itlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb



end{document}

I am searching for a way to have lettrines and normal text all to align to the left and long lines to be indented negatively as shown here:

Not sure of what are you trying to do exactly, but for lines without drop capitals is enough everypar{hangindent5cm} and of course each line must be a paragraph.

In case that you do not want the hang indent after some lines, add also handafter.

Nothing of this will not work for lettrines paragraphs, as they have already fixed parameters, but via lettrine options you can simulate a hangindent and adjust the lettrine position and size in several ways. I played with some of these options in the MWE to show some of the possibilities.

It seems that you want also several lines attached to the same lettrine . Then hen they must be in the same paragraph and use newline.This will not allow a a hang indentation of each possible long line, only simulate it for the whole paragraph.

For simplicity the MWE bellow show par instead of blank lines and macros only for the dummy text:

documentclass[11pt,a5paper]{article}

usepackage{geometry}

usepackage{lettrine,lipsum,xcolor}

setlength{parindent}{0pt}

% dummy text definitions

defkantreason{our knowledge  begins with the senses, 

proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. 

There is nothing higher than reason.}

defshortext{A pretty short line of regular text.}

defdroptext{Another short line with lettrine.}

begin{document}

{parsetlength{parskip}{1ex}

everypar{hangindent5cm}

shortext

lettrine[lines=5,findent=-20pt,slope=.5em]{A}{ll} 

kantreason 

newline  droptext newline droptext

parshortext

par All kantreason

parshortext

par All kantreason

lettrine[loversize=-.1,lraise=.5,lines=3,lhang=0, 

findent=-5pt,nindent=2cm]{A}{ll} kantreason

parshortext

parhangafter3shortextshortextshortextshortext

shortextshortextshortextshortextshortext 

par} % group must end with par!!!

end{document}

Instead of using lettrine, you can adjust the parshape to wrap around the letter. This way a newline would work without problem.

documentclass{article}



usepackage{lettrine,graphicx}



newcommand{lb}{newline}



% https://tex.stackexchange.com/q/127504/5764

makeatletter

defnewparshape{parshape@npshape0{}}

def@npshape#1#2#3{ifx\#3expandafter@@@npshapeelseexpandafter@@npshapefi

  {#1}{#2}{#3}}

def@@npshape#1#2#3#4#5{%

  ifnum#3>z@expandafter@firstoftwoelseexpandafter@secondoftwofi

  {expandafter@@npshapeexpandafter{thenumexpr#1+1relax}{#2 #4 #5}{numexpr#3-1relax}{#4}{#5}}%

  {@npshape{#1}{#2}}}

def@@@npshape#1#2#3{#1 #2 }

makeatother



begin{document}



raggedright

A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

newparshape{4}{0pt}{linewidth}{1}{2.5em}{dimexprlinewidth-2.5em}{1}{0pt}{linewidth}\

raisebox{dimexpr-height+.6baselineskip}[0pt][0pt]{%

  resizebox{!}{1.6baselineskip}{A}}pretty short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line with lettrinelb

A pretty short line of regular textlb

A pretty short line of regular text but way too long to be on one line, so we need to break itlb

A pretty short line of regular textlb



end{document}

In a bigger document, you could define a "lettrine" for each letter, say:

newcommand{LettrineA}{%

  newparshape{4}{0pt}{linewidth}{1}{2.5em}{dimexprlinewidth-2.5em}{1}{0pt}{linewidth}\

  raisebox{dimexpr-height+.6baselineskip}[0pt][0pt]{%

    resizebox{!}{1.6baselineskip}{A}}%

}



newcommand{LettrineB}{%

  % ...

}