widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

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widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

Ralf Jahns
Hello,

in the document I created, there are lots of widows and orphans, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans. (Believe me, the german name is even funnier.)

I also have headings as the last line of a page.

I could insert page breaks manually with <<<< but if I modify the text afterwards and things move, the page breaks will not fit any more :-(

Sorry, but in my humble opinion, taking care of this is a must for every typesetting system.

One more thing I don't like is, that the distance above and below headings is equal. A heading should be closer to the following text, because it belongs to this. I checked a few books and in each and every book it is so.

I was able to modify the default-theme.yml (after I found it, which wasn't easy) but unfortunately it doesn't look good if two headings follow directly:

== heading1
=== heading2

Best regards
Ralf
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Re: widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

mojavelinux
Administrator
Don't worry, I know what you're talking about ;)

It's very unlikely windows and orphans will ever be implemented in Asciidoctor PDF (except in special cases) due to limitations in the underlying PDF generator. All is not lost, however. That's one of the reasons we're starting to explore a new solution to PDF generation that uses browser technologies, which support windows and orphans natively. I'll have more information about that in the weeks to come.

In the meantime, manual page breaks in the final draft are a necessary workaround.

Best,

-Dan

On Fri, Jan 24, 2020 at 12:08 PM Ralf Jahns [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:
Hello,

in the document I created, there are lots of widows and orphans, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans. (Believe me, the german name is even funnier.)

I also have headings as the last line of a page.

I could insert page breaks manually with <<<< but if I modify the text afterwards and things move, the page breaks will not fit any more :-(

Sorry, but in my humble opinion, taking care of this is a must for every typesetting system.

One more thing I don't like is, that the distance above and below headings is equal. A heading should be closer to the following text, because it belongs to this. I checked a few books and in each and every book it is so.

I was able to modify the default-theme.yml (after I found it, which wasn't easy) but unfortunately it doesn't look good if two headings follow directly:

== heading1
=== heading2

Best regards
Ralf


If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:
https://discuss.asciidoctor.org/widows-and-orphans-poor-typography-in-asciidoctor-pdf-tp7531.html
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NAML


--
Dan Allen | @mojavelinux | https://twitter.com/mojavelinux
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Re: widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

Ralf Jahns
Thank you very much for your quick and kindly answer. Good to read, that you agree, that the typography should be improved. What you wrote about the new pdf generator sounds promising.

Best Regards
Ralf Jahns
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Re: widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

heiwil
In reply to this post by mojavelinux
Dan,
I'm just starting to use Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor PDF for producing operator manuals and machine documentations. Beside missing text flow around images, the only unsolvable issue I found until now is the handling of page breaks (Hurenkinder and Schusterjungen in German) as Ralf described above.

You wrote you try to implement a better solution. Was it successful?
Can I help (testing, coding)?

Heiko
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Re: widows and orphans (poor typography) in asciidoctor-pdf

mojavelinux
Administrator
Heiko,

Unfortunately not. It's an exceptionally complex issue to solve given how the PDF generation is handled (by Prawn). Once content is written to the PDF stream, it cannot be unwritten. So unless we know what content is coming next, we cannot anticipate whether or not to advance to the next page. And checking for content ahead of the current block, line, or character is a rabbit hole that ends up having side effects (and likely a major redesign of the converter, if it's even achievable).

This is one of those features that's probably not going to make it into Asciidoctor PDF, but that we'll be looking at for Asciidoctor Web PDF. The difference between these two is that Asciidoctor Web PDF uses a browser engine to render and layout the content, giving us much more powerful reflow controls.

Best Regards,

-Dan

On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 12:31 AM heiwil [via Asciidoctor :: Discussion] <[hidden email]> wrote:
Dan,
I'm just starting to use Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor PDF for producing operator manuals and machine documentations. Beside missing text flow around images, the only unsolvable issue I found until now is the handling of page breaks (Hurenkinder and Schusterjungen in German) as Ralf described above.

You wrote you try to implement a better solution. Was it successful?
Can I help (testing, coding)?

Heiko


If you reply to this email, your message will be added to the discussion below:
https://discuss.asciidoctor.org/widows-and-orphans-poor-typography-in-asciidoctor-pdf-tp7531p8351.html
To start a new topic under Asciidoctor :: Discussion, email [hidden email]
To unsubscribe from Asciidoctor :: Discussion, click here.
NAML


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Dan Allen (he, him, his) | @mojavelinux | https://twitter.com/mojavelinux