Handling of widows

[Matt McManus]

Hey all,

I was wondering if there were plans for cufon to deal with widows. A
widow is a single word that wraps to the next line. It is generally
accepted as undesirable in the type community. I've been looking over
the JS and while I haven't had a chance to implement this on my own I
have a suggestion for how this could work.

By default, cufon wraps each word in a cufon-canvas span. The easiest
and most practical solution in my mind is to wrap the last two words
in a span called cufon-tail or cufon-widont (ala, Shaun Inman) and put
a display inline-block or just block on that span. This way if it
needs to wrap it will bring over the last two words instead of just
one.

Thoughts? Better implementations?

[Simo Kinnunen]

Hi Matt,

Interesting. I guess it would be possible to add basic support for
widows, but it wouldn't work in the following situation (imagine a
line break after the word "few"):

<h1>text text text ...... last <strong>few</strong> words</h1>

Do you think this would be an acceptable limitation?

About the implementation: it would be better to use white-space:
nowrap than display: block/inline-block, because it's less likely to
break the layout. But an even better solution would be to simply use
one canvas for the last two words.

Also, would you mind creating a feature request over at our issue
tracker (http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues)? It's the best way to
get things done.

Simo

[Erik Vorhes]

If there were an &nbsp; before "words" in your example, would it be
possible for Cufon to encode it as U-00A0 (a.k.a. "no-break-space") if
the Latin-1 supplement is included? I'm not sure if it would
accomplish anything different than what's already been discussed,
though. (However, I'd also advise against setting that last span as
display: block; you'd have a break before the last two words even when
not having a widow issue.)

Erik

On May 6, 1:35 pm, Simo Kinnunen <sor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> Interesting. I guess it would be possible to add basic support for  
> widows, but it wouldn't work in the following situation (imagine a  
> line break after the word "few"):
>
> <h1>text text text ...... last <strong>few</strong> words</h1>
>
> Do you think this would be an acceptable limitation?
>
> About the implementation: it would be better to use white-space:  
> nowrap than display: block/inline-block, because it's less likely to  
> break the layout. But an even better solution would be to simply use  
> one canvas for the last two words.
>
> Also, would you mind creating a feature request over at our issue  

> tracker (http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues)?It's the best way to  

[Matt McManus]

The white-space: nowrap is a great idea. I can't believe I've never
used that.

Issue has been created: http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues#issue/20

On May 6, 2:35 pm, Simo Kinnunen <sor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Matt,
>
> Interesting. I guess it would be possible to add basic support for  
> widows, but it wouldn't work in the following situation (imagine a  
> line break after the word "few"):
>
> <h1>text text text ...... last <strong>few</strong> words</h1>
>
> Do you think this would be an acceptable limitation?
>
> About the implementation: it would be better to use white-space:  
> nowrap than display: block/inline-block, because it's less likely to  
> break the layout. But an even better solution would be to simply use  
> one canvas for the last two words.
>
> Also, would you mind creating a feature request over at our issue  

> tracker (http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues)?It's the best way to  

[DanB]

I would suggest that this feature could easily be implemented using a
separate script--possibly using the Widont technique, which adds a non-
breaking space before the last word of every paragraph. Then all that
would be needed would be for cufon to treat words separated by a non-
breaking space as one word and wrap them both in one span element.
Unfortunately, this is not how it behaves currently, but may I suggest
that the project maintainer consider implementing this change?

On May 7, 8:29 am, Matt McManus <mattmcma...@gmail.com> wrote:
> The white-space: nowrap is a great idea. I can't believe I've never
> used that.
>
> Issue has been created:http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues#issue/20
>
> On May 6, 2:35 pm, Simo Kinnunen <sor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Hi Matt,
>
> > Interesting. I guess it would be possible to add basic support for  
> > widows, but it wouldn't work in the following situation (imagine a  
> > line break after the word "few"):
>
> > <h1>text text text ...... last <strong>few</strong> words</h1>
>
> > Do you think this would be an acceptable limitation?
>
> > About the implementation: it would be better to use white-space:  
> > nowrap than display: block/inline-block, because it's less likely to  
> > break the layout. But an even better solution would be to simply use  
> > one canvas for the last two words.
>
> > Also, would you mind creating a feature request over at our issue  

> > tracker (http://github.com/sorccu/cufon/issues)?It'sthe best way to  

[Simo Kinnunen]

Hi Dan,

Ok, non-breaking spaces (\u00a0) are now supported.

Simo