[texhax] using larger units to determine breaks?

William Adams will.adams at frycomm.com
Wed May 6 14:06:41 CEST 2009


On May 6, 2009, at 7:34 AM, William Adams wrote:

> Lessee, one has a 100,000 word novel w/ 20 chapters, so average 5,000
> words per chapter, each paragraph has on average of five sentences of
> five words each, so 200 paragraphs in a chapter, figure 50 characters
> (a bit long, but I'm trying to make the math easy) per line, and 10
> characters per word (ditto) so 1,000 lines, figure 25 lines per page,
> so 40 pages, so one has to work out how 200 paragraphs of more-or-less
> 1,000 lines inter-act w/ 40 page breaks --- I'll leave it to someone
> who does combinatorial mathematics to work out how many possibilities
> there are if one-fourth the paragraphs can gain a line, one-fourth can
> lose a line, one-fourth gain _or_ lose a line and the balance are
> inflexible and unyielding and won't change their line lengths w/
> reasonable type settings.

A further complication, one must keep track of which lines end in  
hyphens and whether or no the paragraph can be re-set so as to avoid a  
hyphen at the end of a given line.

Ages ago I posted my working technique for page composition --- if  
someone can suggest an improvement on it, I'd be very interested.

> It's probably w/in reach of modern equipment, but it won't be a fast
> typesetting run.


I'm beginning to suspect that the above statement was premature, but  
would love to be proven wrong, esp. by a working algorithm.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.



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