Feature improveent request

[Woody44]

I don't know how difficult this would be to implement, but here's my request, with the reasons for it:

Like most word processing software, TextMaker offers a setting to prevent "widows" and "orphans" in typesetting. A "widow" is a single line of a multi-line paragraph that gets stranded at the top of a page. An orphans is a single line of a multi-line paragraph that gets stranded at the bottom of a page. Like most modern word processors, TextMaker provides a setting (under the text flow tab in the paragraph formatting dialogue) to activate o deactivate widow/orphan protection.

The problem is that they are together.

I am a self-published author. I use my word processor to format books for print. I also format books for other authors. In typesetting books, there is a constant conflict between preventing widows and orphans, versus ensuring that the block of text on each page starts and ends at the same point. This is referred to as "bottom balancing," or "square bottom." While we don't want widows and orphans, we also don't want one page to have fewer lines than other pages -- especially when they are facing pages.

Typographer Robert Bringhurst has a slightly different opinion. According to Bringhurst, “orphans need not trouble the typographer … but widows should get one extra line for company.” When widow and orphan protection is activated together, the result is almost always "short" pages. Then corrective measures (such as modifying tracking (character and/or word spacing) must be applied to try to eliminate the short pages.

https://raider.pressbooks.pub/pressbook ... balancing/

The other ("brute force") method is to NOT activate widow/orphan protection, and to go through each book to identify and to manually correct each instance of widows and orphans.

It would be a great benefit to self-published authors everywhere if the setting for widow/orphan protection could be split, so that we can select widow protection without simultaneously activating orphan protection. (Per Bringhurst.)