Re: [NTG-context] Adjusting column width dynamically to get rid of orphans and widows

25 Jun 2017


      On 6/24/2017 4:48 PM, Thomas Widmann wrote:
...
On 24 June 2017 at 01:19, Henri Menke  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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