[arspr]

Originally Posted by davidfor

I think your interpretation of widows and orphans is is correct. What I suspect is happening is that Kobo is being a bit pessimistic when working out the the amount of space left on a page. Having the bottom part of a line missing from the screen would probably be considered worse than a little extra whitespace.

Your pictures make it hard to tell. The exact number of lines on a page is affected by the number paragraphs and how much space is between them. I suspect these have the top and bottom margin set to zero, but I can't be sure. Because of that, you can't simply count lines.

I do not agree with you davidfor.

Of course in the second image I cannot assure if there's enough space for TWO more lines. Maybe it seems enough, but in fact it isn't barely ...

But, it really doesn't matter because I'm just speaking of ONE line. I just want to move the third line of the paragraph from the third "page" to the bottom of second. And I can assure that there's more than enough free space for that single line.

Originally Posted by davidfor

With all the discussion on widows and orphans, I have never been able to come up with a good test case. The font size and the line length and text all affects this. That makes it a hard to get something that lines up to show the results desired.

Any book is actually suitable. Just play with margins and font size till you get an adequate layout like the one I've posted.

(Of course you can never be sure if you really have enough room for the last line, but when you see faults involving two or more lines at glance, you can be sure something is not working properly).

Originally Posted by GeoffR

I think this is that case, the widows/orphans rules are simply absurd and there is no good way to implement them.

GeoffR, please, don't make me laugh. Even MS Word does it correctly.

DUMMY PROCEDURE FOR STRICT RENDERING OF WIDOWS AND ORPHANS. (Other procedures with direct calculation of needed spaces are fully feasible and possibly desirable):

1. Start rendering your page with whatever font-size, margin, spaces between lines, (... whatever ...), settings.
2. When you reach the bottom of the page, if your paragraph is split then perform the ORPHAN test.
   • If it is not valid> Move the whole paragraph to the next page.
   • If it is valid > Render the rest of the paragraph in the next page.
     1. Perform the WIDOW test in that new second page.
        • If it is valid > You've finished. Continue rendering your new second page...
        • If it is not valid > Move as much lines as you need from the previous page. Of course you can end moving the whole paragraph if you need more lines than available in the previous page.
          • If there were lines left in the previous page, re-do the ORPHAN test in them. If it fails, move those remaining lines (ie. the whole paragraph) to the beginning of the new second page.

Originally Posted by the.Mtn.Man

Does this seriously bother people that much? Am I really the only person who doesn't fret about uneven white space -- or even the infamous long-paragraph bug -- and simply enjoys my book?

Well, I suppose you also think a bad formatted ebook/book or even with typos or plain orthographic errors is also equally enjoyable.

But I do prefer a GOOD looking edition. And it's a pity when that good publishing work is wasted because of silly software errors...

Of course, I'm not going to commit suicide neither I'm going to kill my neighbour because of my rage, neither I'm booking a date with the psychologist to treat a depression but it is somehow disappointing, don't you think?