Re: Adjusting column width dynamically to get rid of orphans and widows

[Henri Menke <henrimenke@gmail.com>]

On Tue, 2017-06-20 at 09:22 +0100, Thomas Widmann wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I recently started experimenting with using ConTeXt (mkiv) for dictionary typesetting. It's a much
> more attractive option than plain TeX or LaTeX because of the support for typesetting on a grid.
> 
> However, grid typesetting can easily result in a large number of orphans and widows, which really
> doesn't look good in a dictionary.
> 
> In an ideal world, I'd want to alter the column width slightly to prevent them (because most
> dictionaries aren't justified, this wouldn't be very noticeable).
> 
> Would it be possible to use LuaTeX to achieve this?  I.e., could one write some code that gets
> triggered by orphans and widows and then alters the current column width slightly until the
> problem disappears?  Has somebody already done this?  Or have the relevant TeX internals not been
> Luafied yet?
> 
> I'd also be interested in other ways to solve this issue – for instance changing the looseness
> dynamically instead of the column width.

Have a look at \widowpenalty and \clubpenalty.  Also use margin kerning and font expansion.

> Thanks a lot,
> 
> Thomas
> --
> Thomas Widmann
> Director
> Complexli Limited
> +44 789 444 3009
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