widows and orphans in ePub

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DaleDe
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widows and orphans in ePub

Post by DaleDe »

I would like to see widows and orphan control in ePub. Currently the paragraph widow and orphan control is ignored which is really ok with me. However, ADE (Adobe Digital Editions) default is to apply a 2 line widow and orphan setting globally throughout the file. Many ePub users, including me, prefer to disable this control in the eBooks generation. This is generally done by adding CSS to turn it off in the body tag, similar to the way global margins are set for the document.

Today I use tweak ePub to add this after the fact but it would be nice to have a choice on the form to set this as desired globally.

Dale
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Post by admin »

In any Atlantis (and MS Word) document, "widow/orphan control" is a paragraph-specific characteristic, not a document-wide characteristic. You can enable/disable "widow/orphan control" for individual paragraphs in your Atlantis documents through the "Format | Paragraph..." menu command (see the "Line & Page Breaks" tab of the "Paragraph Format" dialog).

The latest build of Atlantis 1.6.6 (beta) saves the "widow/orphan control" formatting from a document to EPUB. So you can now disable or enable widow/orphan for certain fragments of EPUB by applying the corresponding formatting to the source document.

You can update your beta-version of Atlantis through the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu command.
DaleDe
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Post by DaleDe »

Interesting that this changed and was not mentioned before. This may make it even more important to have a global override as ADE uses a default of 2 lines if it is not specified. If a paragraph does not turn on widow and orphan control is it set to 0 in the ePub or left out?

Note I am not talking about how AWP works but how the ePub is generated. These don't have to be the same thing. To make it work in ADE you must set it to zero in body and then override it in paragraphs. Note that for ePub w/o control is not on/off but the number of lines and can be done separately for widows and orphans.

Dale
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Post by admin »

If a given paragraph of a document in Atlantis has "widow/orphan control" enabled, and you save this document as EPUB, then open it in ADE, ADE would also enable "widow/orphan control" for this paragraph.

If a given paragraph of a document in Atlantis has "widow/orphan control" disabled, and you save this document as EPUB, then open it in ADE, ADE would also disable "widow/orphan control" for this paragraph.

In other words, you can control widow/orphan directly in your Atlantis document. If you do not need widow/orphan control in your eBook (when viewed in ADE), just press Ctrl+A in your Atlantis document, then choose the "Format | Paragraph..." menu command, uncheck the "Widow/orphan control" box on the "Line & Page Breaks" tab, and click OK. Save as eBook, and open with ADE. There would be no widow/orphan control in ADE as well.
If a paragraph does not turn on widow and orphan control is it set to 0 in the ePub or left out?
It is not left out. It is set to 1. If widow/orphan is enabled for a paragraph in Atlantis, it is set to 2 in EPUB.
DaleDe
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Post by DaleDe »

Thanks for the explanation. I have the beta so I will take a look at this.

Dale
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