Widows and Orphans

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I have not seen this and am curious to know more about it.

Well, there is not much to say; with Kindle Previewer 3.35 the property page-break-after: avoid and page-break-before: avoid is availaible. If you use the Kindle app for android you'll need the last version. And I tested .KFX ebooks made with the last version of your plugin and the properties are being perfectly supported. Very usefull for captions and to avoid lone <h*> tags at the end of a page.

EDIT: However it seems to have a restriction: you can't have two consecutive tags (i.e. <h3> followed by <h4>) with those properties.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Well, there is not much to say; with Kindle Previewer 3.35 the property page-break-after: avoid and page-break-before: avoid is availaible.

If you have an example that behaves differently when the page-break CSS is included or omitted I would like to see it. In my testing there has been no difference in the KFX output produced whether or not those properties are used.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jhowell

If you have an example that behaves differently when the page-break CSS is included or omitted I would like to see it. In my testing there has been no difference in the KFX output produced whether or not those properties are used.

Now <h*> tags are employing BY DEFAULT the properties "page-break-after: avoid" and "page-break-inside: avoid". You won't be able to see any <h*> tags lonely at the end of a page inside a .KFX book made with KP 3.35. Even <h*> tags with multiple lines (with or without <br/> present) will be displayed together in the following page. That didn't happen before.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

Now <h*> tags are employing BY DEFAULT the properties "page-break-after: avoid" and "page-break-inside: avoid". You won't be able to see any <h*> tags lonely at the end of a page inside a .KFX book made with KP 3.35. Even <h*> tags with multiple lines (with or without <br/> present) will be displayed together in the following page. That didn't happen before.

That matches the behavior I have observed. It is a change in the rendering of heading elements, rather than actual support for page-break-after:avoid. Publishers have no control over this and it cannot be used to avoid page breaks in general.

Added: Actually, there does appear to be a way that publishers can have a little control over this. In my testing setting widows/orphans on a heading disables the behavior of preventing a page break between it and the following text. I don't know if Amazon intended for this to happen, since none of this is documented.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That matches the behavior I have observed. It is a change in the rendering of heading elements, rather than actual support for page-break-after:avoid. Publishers have no control over this and it cannot be used to avoid page breaks in general.

Added: Actually, there does appear to be a way that publishers can have a little control over this. In my testing setting widows/orphans on a heading disables the behavior of preventing a page break between it and the following text. I don't know if Amazon intended for this to happen, since none of this is documented.

You mean if you actually set the CSS on w/o, for a heading, it disables it, instead of enabling it? (Am I confused?)

Speaking of, I'm reading a Holmesian Pastiche that was published some years back and I know the formatter for Titan Books, so I know for a fact it wasn't KFX; it was a MOBI / ePUB file, and this thing with the goddamned W/O is starting to make my teeth grind on almost EVERY DAMNED PAGE.

Hitch

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jhowell

That matches the behavior I have observed. It is a change in the rendering of heading elements, rather than actual support for page-break-after:avoid. Publishers have no control over this and it cannot be used to avoid page breaks in general.

Added: Actually, there does appear to be a way that publishers can have a little control over this. In my testing setting widows/orphans on a heading disables the behavior of preventing a page break between it and the following text. I don't know if Amazon intended for this to happen, since none of this is documented.

You can control it and you can use it. Now you know that all <h*> tags have the properties page-break-after: avoid and page-break-inside: avoid. Then in theory you could, for example, use:

<h6><img class="whatever" alt="" src=".../Images/YourImage.jpg" /><br/><span class="caption">This is a caption</span></h6>

to have the caption stuck with the image.

I'm doing further test to know the scope of what can be done. So far, even in epub3, the property "page-break-inside: avoid" is unsupported, but with the new KP, <h*> tags with multiple lines are showed together. So maybe we can use something like:

<h6 class="poetry">Blah, blah, blah,<br/>
blah, blah, blah,<br/>
Blah, blah, blah,<br/>
Blah, blah, blah.</h6>

for paragraphs that we want to have together.

And indeed, nothing of that is documented and I think Amazon will polish all this stuff in next versions of KP.

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You mean if you actually set the CSS on w/o, for a heading, it disables it, instead of enabling it? (Am I confused?)

That's right! All <h*> tags come by default with the properties "page-break-after: avoid" and "page-break-inside: avoid". So if you don't like them, then you need to set in the css stylesheet something like:

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  orphans: 1;
  widows: 1;
}

But the good news is that you can use now <h*> tags for things you want to be together (not very academic but possible ). Of course, you'll have write more code yet for kf7.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

All <h*> tags come by default with the properties "page-break-after: avoid" and "page-break-inside: avoid".

[...]

But the good news is that you can use now <h*> tags for things you want to be together (not very academic but possible ).

Hacking a <h#> like that would be extremely poor practice.

So according to what is being said, code such as this still won't stick together?

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">And this is a poem.</p>
</div>

CSS:

div.poem {
     page-break-inside: avoid;
}

(And I assume still zero support from Amazon for the CSS3 break-inside [latest specs recently deprecated+renamed the page-break-XXXX properties].)

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

So if you don't like them, then you need to set in the css stylesheet something like:

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
  orphans: 1;
  widows: 1;
}

Hmmm... now that widows/orphans are defaulted to 2, would overriding them in the CSS via:

p {
  orphans: 1;
  widows: 1;
}

work?

(This has been something that has been frustrating me in my Kobo Forma EPUB renderer. I was complaining to JSWolf about it a few months back. KEPUBs render with default 1 widows/orphans, but EPUB renderer idiotically defaults 2.)

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

You mean if you actually set the CSS on w/o, for a heading, it disables it, instead of enabling it? (Am I confused?)

What I mean is that the latest KFX renderer seems to treat headings as if they have page-break-inside:avoid and page-break-after:avoid set.

If you try to change that behavior by setting page-break-inside:auto or page-break-after:auto, nothing changes. In fact those property settings will be stripped out during conversion to KFX.

The only way I have found to disable this handling is setting widows:1 and orhpans:1 on the heading. That seems to disable the default handling.

(I hope that was clearer.)

Originally Posted by Hitch

Speaking of, I'm reading a Holmesian Pastiche that was published some years back and I know the formatter for Titan Books, so I know for a fact it wasn't KFX; it was a MOBI / ePUB file, and this thing with the goddamned W/O is starting to make my teeth grind on almost EVERY DAMNED PAGE.

Are you reading on an e-ink Kindle device using the latest (5.12.2) firmware? That firmware is broken in that it always avoids widows and orphans even if the book is coded to allow them.

The iOS, Android, and Fire apps honor the coding of the widows/orphans properties, so I expect that the next e-ink Kindle firmware release will fix this.

I think Amazon made a poor choice in changing Enhanced Typesetting to avoid widows and orphans by default. I suspect that some publishers will be updating their books to add widows:1 and orphans:1 for regular paragraphs to work around this change.

-----

Related to this topic, the page-break-inside:avoid property is usually stripped out during conversion to KFX. However I have found that it is usually carried through and functions as expected if it is used in conjunction with float. If you open the attached EPUB with the latest Kindle Previewer and try different font sizes you will see that it does not want to split up the text in red.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

What I mean is that the latest KFX renderer seems to treat headings as if they have page-break-inside:avoid and page-break-after:avoid set.

If you try to change that behavior by setting page-break-inside:auto or page-break-after:auto, nothing changes. In fact those property settings will be stripped out during conversion to KFX.

The only way I have found to disable this handling is setting widows:1 and orhpans:1 on the heading. That seems to disable the default handling.

(I hope that was clearer.)

Yes, much, many thanks.

Are you reading on an e-ink Kindle device using the latest (5.12.2) firmware? That firmware is broken in that it always avoids widows and orphans even if the book is coded to allow them.

To quote Popeye, I yam, I yam indeed. It's driving me bats**t.

The iOS, Android, and Fire apps honor the coding of the widows/orphans properties, so I expect that the next e-ink Kindle firmware release will fix this.

Your lips, God's ears, all that.

I think Amazon made a poor choice in changing Enhanced Typesetting to avoid widows and orphans by default. I suspect that some publishers will be updating their books to add widows:1 and orphans:1 for regular paragraphs to work around this change.

-----

Related to this topic, the page-break-inside:avoid property is usually stripped out during conversion to KFX. However I have found that it is usually carried through and functions as expected if it is used in conjunction with float. If you open the attached EPUB with the latest Kindle Previewer and try different font sizes you will see that it does not want to split up the text in red.

Hmmmm....I'll go play with that.

Thx,
Hitch

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jhowell

However I have found that it is usually carried through and functions as expected if it is used in conjunction with float.

Great discovery!

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Hacking a <h#> like that would be extremely poor practice.

Yes, but when you are in need...

So according to what is being said, code such as this still won't stick together?

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">And this is a poem.</p>
</div>

CSS:

div.poem {
     page-break-inside: avoid;
}

It will be together if you use:

div.poem {
     float: left;
     width: 100%;
     page-break-inside: avoid;
}

Hmmm... now that widows/orphans are defaulted to 2, would overriding them in the CSS via:

p {
  orphans: 1;
  widows: 1;
}

work?

With the last version for Kindle for Android, yes.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

It will be together if you use:

div.poem {
     float: left;
     width: 100%;
     page-break-inside: avoid;
}

I don't think that will work. In my testing the page-break-avoid seems to only be effective if used with a relatively small width. The details of this are mysterious.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Tex2002ans

Hacking a <h#> like that would be extremely poor practice.

So according to what is being said, code such as this still won't stick together?

<div class="poem">
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">This is a poem.</p>
<p class="poetry">And this is a poem.</p>
</div>

CSS:

div.poem {
     page-break-inside: avoid;
}

(And I assume still zero support from Amazon for the CSS3 break-inside [latest specs recently deprecated+renamed the page-break-XXXX properties].)



Hmmm... now that widows/orphans are defaulted to 2, would overriding them in the CSS via:

p {
  orphans: 1;
  widows: 1;
}

work?

(This has been something that has been frustrating me in my Kobo Forma EPUB renderer. I was complaining to JSWolf about it a few months back. KEPUBs render with default 1 widows/orphans, but EPUB renderer idiotically defaults 2.)

In an ePub, I modify the body to...

body {
  widows: 1;
  orphans: 1;
  margin-top: 0;
  margin-right: 0;
  margin-bottom: 0;
  margin-left: 0;
  text-align: justify;
}

Will this work in KFX?

[RbnJrg]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I don't think that will work. In my testing the page-break-avoid seems to only be effective if used with a relatively small width. The details of this are mysterious.

I did the test and worked! Moreover, I wanted to find a way to avoid a break in the following case:

<h2>My Title</h2>

<h3>My Subtitle</h3>

<p>Some text here ... </p>

After <h3>, a break could be produced (I don't know why, but page-break-after: avoid doesn't work with two <h*> tags consequtive. But with:

<h2>My Title</h2>

<div class="joint">
   <h3>My Subtitle</h3>

   <p>Some text here ... </p>
</div>

with

.joint {
   float: left;
   width: 100%;
   page-break-inside: avoid;
}

all remains together! Do the try!