prevent a bit of paragraph spilling over page turn

[cybmole]

I know it is something to do with widows & orphans but what CSS entry will fix having a paragraph that ends with just a couple of words on the next e-reader "page".
I know that some books don't do this - they have css that prevents it - sometimes over aggressively, but I've never quite got the difference between widows & orphans - do I need to add code for both & what specific code should I add ?

[Toxaris]

I believe that most readers and books have a widows/orphans setting of 2. In that case if a paragraph will spill over to the next page, there must be a minimum of two lines on this and the next page. If not, the paragraph will be lifted to the next page. That is how I believe it works.

[cybmole]

yes, I that is what I also thought.

I think I am seeing a side effect of dabbling with this added code:

body {adobe-text-layout: optimizeSpeed;}

which I am using to prevent hyphenation in the ADE 2 engine - as used by Sony T3. I have started a thread on sony forum., after reading how the above works for Nook readers & it seems to work for Sony T3 also & you can see via ADE v2 on PC, that it prevents end of line hyphenations.

I suspect that adding that line turns off the widows & orphans processing in the ADE2 engine, but maybe I can turn it back on with some more explicit CSS

it is not a showstopper, but it made me realise that I never really mastered this area of CSS. ( I have seen , in individual book's CSS, things like widows: 2; orphans : 2; - but never grasped the difference between those 2 commands )

so perhaps I can/should add extra CSS whenever I tweak a book in Sigil ?

[HarryT]

I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that widow and orphan control is a feature of the rendering engine, not the book.

[cybmole]

Hmm- google says not:
http://www.robertdesprez.com/2013/05...-an-epub-file/
that article claims that cascading CSS will control how ADE behaves & hence how a sony reader would behave.
I suppose to test it properly I'd need to make a test book, just over a page long & then play with CSS value
I just opened lots of my already-read books in search of an actual example in a retail epub, but without finding one that had any explicit CSS, so maybe I've seen it only in books that were actually word or PDF conversions.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that widow and orphan control is a feature of the rendering engine, not the book.

Certainly the rendering engine must support this in the CSS but the CSS is where the change is made. By default Adobe has widows and orphans set to 2 which will support standard usage. To set it explicitly use the following:
widows:2;
orphans:2;
which could be set in the p entry or even in the body entry. Set to 1 to turn off. Some implementations do not like 0 so don't use it.

Dale

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Hmm- google says not:
http://www.robertdesprez.com/2013/05...-an-epub-file/
that article claims that cascading CSS will control how ADE behaves & hence how a sony reader would behave.
I suppose to test it properly I'd need to make a test book, just over a page long & then play with CSS value
I just opened lots of my already-read books in search of an actual example in a retail epub, but without finding one that had any explicit CSS, so maybe I've seen it only in books that were actually word or PDF conversions.

the easy way to test this in windows is to just set it in CSS and then resize the window to see the effect. Adobe default is on (2).

Dale

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Certainly the rendering engine must support this in the CSS but the CSS is where the change is made. By default Adobe has widows and orphans set to 2 which will support standard usage. To set it explicitly use the following:
widows:2;
orphans:2;
which could be set in the p entry or even in the body entry. Set to 1 to turn off. Some implementations do not like 0 so don't use it.

Dale

Thank you for the information - much appreciated.

[cybmole]

i wonder if adobe has dropped those defaults in later ade /sony readers, or if there is another rule to consider

I have 2 cases where a chapter ends with just 2 words on the last e-reader page. the widows & orphans rules should have moved the whole final paragraph to a new page and prevented that? , but maybe it also depends on the length of that final paragraph ?

[Jellby]

It would move just one line, unless the paragraph is only 3 lines long (then there is no way to have more than one line both before and after the pagebreak).

The value 2 is not simply the default in ÄDE, but the default in CSS3. It could be that ADE is doing thing differently, and it has its own bugs related to pagebreaks.

[cybmole]

Thanks,
so if default values of 2 were working, I should be seeing 1 1/2 lines of text on the last chapter page, not just 1/2 line.

I think I was seeing that with my old sony prs-650 because I recall looking up why some pages seemed a little shorter than others, but with the latest readers I suspect they have opted instead for squared off pages.

What I find frustrating is the lack of documentation from both Adobe & Sony - thus lots of trial & error seems needed to figure out what internal defaults are in use. I'll have to explicitly add the widows: 2 etc to p styles in a test book & then play spot the difference, if any.

PS I tried opening the same book in PC ADE v2, then messing with font & window size to try & force it to display an odd 1/2 line at chapter end - I could not make it happen with the PC software, not in the 5 minutes I spent trying anyway.

[Notjohn]

Originally Posted by cybmole

I have 2 cases where a chapter ends with just 2 words on the last e-reader page. the widows & orphans rules should have moved the whole final paragraph to a new page and prevented that? , but maybe it also depends on the length of that final paragraph ?

You bring up a hilarious possibility where a paragraph is a page long plus one word, so the paragraph keeps getting booted forward infinitely, so the book never ends nor does the paragraph ever get displayed.

[theducks]

I have had a couple of cases show up where the chapter end got sliced n' diced on the screen for no glaringly obvious reason

(last 3 screens of a chapter)
almost end of main body
2 lines
last 2 lines

I have not done a in depth debug to locate the trigger event.

I run the Older MRSDK (no more Astak updates, am running the Jinke V5 FW)

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by theducks

I have had a couple of cases show up where the chapter end got sliced n' diced on the screen for no glaringly obvious reason

(last 3 screens of a chapter)
almost end of main body
2 lines
last 2 lines

I have not done a in depth debug to locate the trigger event.

I run the Older MRSDK (no more Astak updates, am running the Jinke V5 FW)

Older versions of the RMSDK (eg on the older Sonys) had a habit of breaking a long paragraph at an arbitrary point half way down the page. More recent versions seem not to do that any more.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Older versions of the RMSDK (eg on the older Sonys) had a habit of breaking a long paragraph at an arbitrary point half way down the page. More recent versions seem not to do that any more.

Thanks

Sigh!
I am in the crowd that does not 'build my own', so there will be no updates to RMSDK (It may be moot, The proprietary battery is showing signs of EOL sometime in the year)