Re: Lost in the murky detail of designing a page layout

[Guy Worthington <guyw@multiline.com.au>]

Hello again Patrick,

The reason I've taken so long to reply, is that I've been trying to
understand TeX's line-breaking mechanism.  Your perceptive question:

> Why is there a difference between knuth.tex and tufte.tex in the
> example (try \input tufte instead of \input knuth).

In the example below

%-- tryISOLayout.ctx ----------------------------------------
%output=pdf

\setuppapersize[A4][A4] 
\setupencoding[default=texnansi]     
\setupbodyfont[cmr,14.4pt] 
 
\def\GoldenRatio{1.61803}     
\setbox0\hbox{\dorecurse{26}{\character\recurselevel}} 
 
\setuplayout[width=2.5\wd0, 
             header=\lineheight, 
             footer=\lineheight, 
             height=\GoldenRatio\makeupwidth, 
             headerdistance=\dimexpr( 
             (\makeupheight-37\lineheight-\headerheight-\footerheight) /2), 
	     footerdistance=\headerdistance, 
             backspace=\dimexpr(\makeupwidth/7), 
             topspace=\dimexpr(\makeupwidth/7)] 

\showframe  
\starttext 
 \startlinenumbering 

    \dorecurse{5}{\input tufte} 

  \stoplinenumbering 
 
\stoptext 

%-- end tryISOLayout.ctx ------------------------------------

I think is due to TeX trying very hard not to generate a widow line.

Even after fiddling around with \looseness, I couldn't force TeX to
add the 37th line.  I've a feeling that if you come across a
pathological case like the above, you really have to follow Knuth's
advice and rewrite the paragraph.