Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-text-4] Allow for paragraph-level line breaking

On Wed, 2018-08-08 at 18:14 -0700, fantasai wrote:
> @liamquin Thanks very much for your detailed comment on line-breaking 
> algorithms in 
> https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/672#issuecomment-380902415
>  !
> Do you have any good references we can link to from the spec, or
> should I try to summarize your points in a note?

I don't have references i'm afraid. I've never seen any on the approach
i describe - i came up with it myself based on how hand composition
worked, but i'm sure many other people have too. I understand that
InDesign uses an n-line moving window with n probably 9 or so.

I certainly don't mind reviewing a note, but no longer have anyone
paying my way to participate in the CSS WG.

There are plenty of references on problems with Knuth-Plass and
interactive editing, and people have tried lots of experiments to try
and make it work, but the combination of (1) it not being stable (the
insertion point moves around distressingly) and (2) corner cases that
for TeX-for-print the author has to correct by hand, make it not really
ideal. In an editor the insertion point can be kept stable most of the
time by not reflowing the paragraph immediately, e.g. not until a
paragraph loses focus, and that compromise might work in a browser.
It's mostly a problem when you are editing in the middle of existing
text.

Knuth and Plass published a paper, probably early 1980s, proving their
modified algorithm was NP-complete.


-- 
Liam Quin, https://www.holoweb.net/liam/cv/
Web slave for vintage clipart http://www.fromoldbooks.org/
Available for XML/Document/Information Architecture/
XSL/XQuery/Web/Text Processing/A11Y work & consulting.



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Received on Thursday, 9 August 2018 04:04:34 UTC