I would definitely want to have a means of having automatic tracking in order to get rid of the last line of a paragraph with just one word on it. [Possibly two or three words even, if they take up less than 1/3 of line.]

I am working on a more manual of way of doing this in the mean time.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

This is a difficult task, but we do plan to add it to Prince in the future.

Prince 7.0 includes a new justification algorithm which should improve the layout of justified text. (It helps if hyphenation is also enabled, to allow the greatest number of possible line-breaking opportunities).

I build a companion program for Prince (Windows only) that now allows interactive tracking. It also handles picture insertion, placement, and deletion in a two column world.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

By adding markup to the last word of a paragraph I can control the last line of paragraph from ending up short. In the process you can see that the next to last line is loose since it can't fit the last two words. If Prince would automatically try adjusting the tracking then this can be resolved.



Negative tracking:


Positive tracking:


There should be a way of setting a high penalty for loose line and try negative tracking to start with to correct the problem.


Color is for identifying how much tracking was applied to a paragraph. This is turned off for publication.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators

1. loose line fixed by negative tracking.png‎ 5.5 kB
2. loose line fixed by positive tracking.png‎ 6.0 kB
3. loose line.png‎ 6.4 kB

The front end you are describing sounds like it could be really useful for my work as well. Would you be willing to share? One of the only significant concerns I have with Prince right now is about those last lines, especially when the last word of a paragraph is broken by a hyphen. I've got a workaround, but it's not an elegant one. I'd love to mess with what you've built to see if it addresses my issue.

Thanks,

jz

HTML
<p class="List_Item1_Additional"><span class="Verse_Number double_digit" id="NIV-GEN.1.31">31</span>God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth<span class="last_word_in_run">day.</span><span class="next_verse">1</span><span class="next_chapter">2</span></p><p class="List_Item1_Additional chapter"><span class="Chapter_Number" id="NIV-GEN.2">2</span><span class="Verse_Number single_digit verse_one" id="NIV-GEN.2.1">1</span>Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast<span class="last_word_in_short_run">array.</span>


The secret to fixing the last word problem, at least for now, is to wrap it in a spans
last_word_in_short_run
last_word_in_run

I define short as under 100 characters. That is around 3 lines for me.

CSS
.last_word_in_short_run:before {content: " "; /*background-color: green*/ ;}
.last_word_in_run:before {content: "\00a0"; /*background-color: red*/ ;}
.last_word_in_short_run { hyphenate-before: 4; hyphenate-after: 7; /*background-color: yellow */;}
.last_word_in_run { hyphenate-before: 4; hyphenate-after: 7; }

Michael can give you my email if you want further help offline.

Jim Albright
Wycliffe Bible Translators