Widows and Orphans

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by RbnJrg

all remains together! Do the try!

I tried it. That case seems to work well.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The latest version of the Kindle Previewer, 3.35, now supports widows and orphans. KPF files produced by that software include the KFX equivalents of these properties.

I did some further testing.

Besides supporting the widows and orphans properties in EPUB, KPR 3.35 also obeys the "Widow/Orphan control" in Word documents.

Prevention of widows and orphans is the default in Word. You need to uncheck it if you want to return to the previous Kindle rendering behavior. It is found in the Line and Page Breaks tab in Paragraph settings in MS Word.

Presumably the processing done by Amazon for uploaded Word documents now works the same way as the Previewer. This is something that those who publish directly from Word documents should be aware of.

[jhowell]

One other bit of news on this topic.

There is a discussion thread in Amazon's Kindle help forum where customers are expressing their unhappiness with the new widow/orphan behavior in the 5.12.2 firmware. One of the posters claims they were told by customer service that the "kindle team is working to resolve this issue through a new update, which should kick in in about a week".

I have my doubts. I believe that Amazon is going to fix the firmware, but are they going to revert to the prior behavior or just keep the new default and obey w/o overrides if present in content? Also, a fix in a week seems unlikely since Kindle firmware comes out approximately quarterly and 5.12.2 just came out about a month ago.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by jhowell

It does not work when displayed on Kindles running the latest 5.12.2 firmware because that KFX renderer it defaults to 2 and does not yet support the equivalent KFX property to modify it.

The 5.12.3 firmware released today still defaults for 2 for widows and orphans in KFX, but now allows that to be overridden by the formatting of the book.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The 5.12.3 firmware released today still defaults for 2 for widows and orphans in KFX, but now allows that to be overridden by the formatting of the book.

That's how ADE works.

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The 5.12.3 firmware released today still defaults for 2 for widows and orphans in KFX, but now allows that to be overridden by the formatting of the book.

Thanks for keeping us updated.

[HowlerX]

Originally Posted by jhowell

The 5.12.3 firmware released today still defaults for 2 for widows and orphans in KFX, but now allows that to be overridden by the formatting of the book.

What's the exact CSS to prevent widows and orphans altogether? Is it:

...
widows: 1;
orphans: 1}

?
I'm not a fan of the current behavior.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by HowlerX

What's the exact CSS to prevent widows and orphans altogether?

What you wrote will work, but technically you should have another semicolon at the end of the last declaration (before the closing brace).

By doing this you are allowing widows and orphans, not preventing them.

The next question is: where to apply it? Setting it as part of the styling for normal paragraphs would probably be best for most books. Alternatively, you could apply it to body elements and everything else will inherit it.

[HowlerX]

Thanks for the reply. Going to experiment a bit, to see what I can live with. What a change and why now, Amazon? Ugh!

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by jhowell

What you wrote will work, but technically you should have another semicolon at the end of the last declaration (before the closing brace).

By doing this you are allowing widows and orphans, not preventing them.

The next question is: where to apply it? Setting it as part of the styling for normal paragraphs would probably be best for most books. Alternatively, you could apply it to body elements and everything else will inherit it.

Why do you need a ; after the last line in the class? Is this a Kindle thing?

I always put windows and orphans in body and it works for the entire book. Even if I'm converting to KF8 that's where it goes.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

What you wrote will work, but technically you should have another semicolon at the end of the last declaration (before the closing brace).

By doing this you are allowing widows and orphans, not preventing them.

The next question is: where to apply it? Setting it as part of the styling for normal paragraphs would probably be best for most books. Alternatively, you could apply it to body elements and everything else will inherit it.

All I know is, I've been reading a series of urban supernatural fiction (think Harry Desden, but not..) and it's annoying the holy s**t out of me. I'm reading on my go-to, a Voyage, and every other damned page is short. SHORT, not merely "oh, that last widow or orphan is doing X." It's incredibly, incredibly annoying. It's not moving ONE damn line, it's moving paragraphs and it's starting to literally (not using that word like some tween teenybopper) make me grind my teeth when reading, which, obviously, is not really the desired result.

I'm sorry, oh-widow-and-orphan obsessives, but the widows and orphans were invisible. This crap is NOT.

Hitch

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why do you need a ; after the last line in the class? Is this a Kindle thing?

You don't need it. It works either way.

Originally Posted by jhowell

What you wrote will work, but technically you should have another semicolon at the end of the last declaration (before the closing brace).

I looked at the CSS specifications and I now believe that I was wrong about that.

Technically the semicolon is a seperator, not a terminator in a list of declarations. So leaving off the last semicolon might be considered to be more correct.

However, the parser to consume a list of declarations is supposed to do nothing when encountering semicolons so either way will work.

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

All I know is, I've been reading a series of urban supernatural fiction (think Harry Desden, but not..) and it's annoying the holy s**t out of me. I'm reading on my go-to, a Voyage, and every other damned page is short. SHORT, not merely "oh, that last widow or orphan is doing X." It's incredibly, incredibly annoying. It's not moving ONE damn line, it's moving paragraphs...

I know from my testing that the KFX renderer will honor widows/orphans values up to around five. (I don't know the exact limit.) A book coded with those values will have some excessively short pages.

Would you mind sharing the ASIN for one of those books. I am curious whether it is a widows/orphans issue or something else.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by jhowell

I know from my testing that the KFX renderer will honor widows/orphans values up to around five. (I don't know the exact limit.) A book coded with those values will have some excessively short pages.

Would you mind sharing the ASIN for one of those books. I am curious whether it is a widows/orphans issue or something else.

Sure, PM'ed.

Hitch

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Sure, PM'ed.

Thanks!