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.

Thanks a lot,

Thomas

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