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

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

On 6/24/2017 4:48 PM, Thomas Widmann wrote:
> On 24 June 2017 at 01:19, Henri Menke <henrimenke@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> How about putting every entry into a box, making it unbreakable?  Of course, you get unbalanced
>> columns this way, but I think keeping the entries together is easier for the reader.
> 
> Thanks for your suggestion, but I don't think that'd work. Firstly,
> it'd require you to figure out whether an entry is longer than three
> lines (and thus breakable) before putting it into a box.  Secondly,
> unbalanced columns really aren't the done thing in dictionary
> publishing.
> 
> Lots of published dictionaries are full of orphans and widows because
> they're so hard to avoid without a lot of manual intervention, which
> is why I'm keen to explore and novel ways to avoid them.
> 
> However, all ways I can think of requires typesetting the entries in
> the last column multiple times, i.e.:
> 
> repeat
>    adjust parameters (column width, looseness, ...)
>    typeset column
> until the column doesn't generate orphan/widow
> 
> Is this possible with ConTeXt/LuaTeX?
maybe be more explicit with very large penalties helps

\startdocument

\showmakeup[penalty]

\startbuffer
     \dorecurse{30}{
         \widowpenalty\maxdimen
         \clubpenalty \maxdimen
         {\tf test #1.1}\crlf
         {\bi test #1.2}\crlf
         {\tf test #1.3}\crlf
         {\bf test #1.4}\relax
         \par
     }
\stopbuffer

\dorecurse{20}{
     \dontcomplain
     \startmixedcolumns[balance=yes]
         \dorecurse{#1}{line #1\crlf}
         \getbuffer
     \stopmixedcolumns
     \page
}

\stopdocument



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