Do widows and orphans work in ACCESS?

[arspr]

A simple question because either I'm doing something wrong or they don't work in FW 3.0.0. (I hadn't tested before).

I've made two tries:

• Adding * { widows: 2; orphans: 2; } inside \.kobo\kepub\kepub-book.css. (That file usage is explained in this thread).
• Editing the source epub and adding body {widows: 2; orphans: 2;} to its css.

And I continue seeing lonely single lines at the end / beginning of the pages.

[davidfor]

Widows and orphans do work in kepubs, but as the default value for both is 2, you won't see a change with what you are doing. Set them to 1 or 0. Strictly, 1 is the minimum value, but 0 seems to work as well.

You might also need to add "!important" in the kebup-book.css. This will force it to override the setting if it has been done in the book.

[arspr]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Widows and orphans do work in kepubs, but as the default value for both is 2, you won't see a change with what you are doing. Set them to 1 or 0. Strictly, 1 is the minimum value, but 0 seems to work as well.

You might also need to add "!important" in the kebup-book.css. This will force it to override the setting if it has been done in the book.

Well, in that case then there's a clear bug here.

Unless I'm completely wrong, the number in widows and orphans specifies the minimum amount on lines that should be rendered in a paragraph at the end or at the beginning of a page. (CSS reference for widows and orphans).

In this way, lonely lines are not permitted if a value of 2 is used (which is also the default one).

I upload four examples of these settings being violated, (but I can actually swear that I've seen this issue in all the books I've opened so far):

• Two in a sideloaded kepubized epub, where, you can trust me, there's no orphans or widows setting inside the book. (I've checked it with Sigil).
• Two in an "official" kepub from my Kobo account. (I cannot check it as it is DRM protected, but I doubt that it has any kind of setting about orphans or widows, because nearly no book has them).

[DNSB]

This is probably not your issue but how have you been editing kepub-book.css? I found that I needed to use a text editor (Notepad++) that left the end of line as a simple LF character.

Regards,
David

[arspr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

This is probably not your issue but how have you been editing kepub-book.css? I found that I needed to use a text editor (Notepad++) that left the end of line as a simple LF character.

Nope, it doesn't matter.

As a test I've redone my kepub-book.css with this setting:

* { 
    widows: 2;
    orphans: 2;
    text-decoration: line-through;
}

And it perfectly works... on the crossing out part of the style. Every book I open is completely decorated...

Hey, in Terry Pratchet's "The Carpet People", I have even found a page starting with a widow line and ending with an orphan one.

Now seriously, have any of you made widows and orphans work as expected?

[davidfor]

Looks like Kobo have changed something with 3.0.0. For some time I have had the following in my kepub-book.css:

body {
	orphans: 0 !important;
	widows: 0 !important;
	}

And it worked perfectly. I just changed the numbers to 4, and it made no change. That suggests the ACCESS renderer is ignoring the widows and orphans CSS settings.

This is just a quick test on one book. I'll have more of a play later and see if I am right.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by arspr

Nope, it doesn't matter.

As a test I've redone my kepub-book.css with this setting:

* { 
    widows: 2;
    orphans: 2;
    text-decoration: line-through;
}

And it perfectly works... on the crossing out part of the style. Every book I open is completely decorated...

Hey, in Terry Pratchet's "The Carpet People", I have even found a page starting with a widow line and ending with an orphan one.

Now seriously, have any of you made widows and orphans work as expected?

Those may not have been orphans or widows -- I've found a quite a few ebooks that have lines such as <p>&nbsp;</p> to supply a nice wide space between paragraphs. Since the paragraph is only a single line, the widows/orphans setting has no effect on them. Not to mention the dimbulbs who put a mass of blanks lines at the end of a chapter just to ensure we will get a blank page between chapters. The commercially produced epubs seem to be some of the worst offenders when it comes to questionable code.

I was checking with 3.0.0 and several of the changes I put into the kepub-book.css are no longer showing up. I'm currently browsing for some non-DRMed kepub.epub books so I can a look at the internal CSS to see if any changes have been made.

Regards,
David

[arspr]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Those may not have been orphans or widows -- I've found a quite a few ebooks that have lines such as <p>&nbsp;</p> to supply a nice wide space between paragraphs. Since the paragraph is only a single line, the widows/orphans setting has no effect on them.

I can assure they are orphans and widows, not single line paragraphs... Look at how the text is justified and how they don't have the ending period in orphans (which wouldn't happen in a single line paragraph), and how indentation is different and they start in lower-case in the widows (which wouldn't either happen in a single line paragraph).

Originally Posted by davidfor

Looks like Kobo have changed something with 3.0.0. For some time I have had the following in my kepub-book.css:

body {
	orphans: 0 !important;
	widows: 0 !important;
	}

And it worked perfectly. I just changed the numbers to 4, and it made no change. That suggests the ACCESS renderer is ignoring the widows and orphans CSS settings.

If you set 0 (or 1), it is like not working. So you wouldn't have probably noticed even if this feature was broken/un-implemented since long ago.

Nevertheless, and as you also say 2 should be the default value which should have filtered out lonely lines (but in the rare, very rare books which have this property set). My memory is not perfect and I was not looking for this effect, (probably because I was pretty used to it not working fine in my old Sony PRS-650, possible related to the weird rendering Adobe built-in renderer does in long paragraphs, when the weekday is Monday or when it's raining outside), but I'm nearly sure this feature has not worked since at least FW 2.8.1. I mean, I'm nearly sure I've never seen this feature working since I bought my Aura HD one month ago more or less.


EDITED ------

Because of some edits I've made to the book I'm currently reading (Las Legiones Malditas, which is the sideloaded kepubized epub in the previous screenshots), I can also say that neither page-break-inside: avoid;, nor page-break-after: avoid;, nor page-break-before: avoid; seem to work...

[arspr]

As sadly expected, this issue is also present in FW 3.1.0 in either widows, orphans and page-breaks.

[joctoral]

Originally Posted by arspr

As sadly expected, this issue is also present in FW 3.1.0 in either widows, orphans and page-breaks.

Confirmed.
And @page does not seem to work.