Thanks Simon. Now I understand. I've just committed the general fix for the problem (I think), but have hard-coded the penalty value to 900 for the moment. I think your idea might be interesting but I'm a little clueless about the right formula to calculate an appropriate penalty value. I'll leave that for someone more mathematically gifted. :-) The code line is clearly marked with a TODO item if anyone wants to try. I'm happy enough with the result. :-)
On 31.07.2005 12:17:31 Simon Pepping wrote: > On Sat, Jul 30, 2005 at 03:46:31PM +0200, Jeremias Maerki wrote: > > Sorry, but I have trouble understanding what you mean. Could you please > > elaborate with an example? Thanks. > > > > On 30.07.2005 13:54:25 Simon Pepping wrote: > > > On Wed, Jul 27, 2005 at 10:40:25PM +0200, Jeremias Maerki wrote: > > > > I was under the impression that the breaker automatically favors break > > > > decisions that take up less space. It even goes so far that if you have > > > > a minimum="0pt" and an optimum="2opt" on a space-before, that it > > > > currently chooses "0pt" which is not so good, actually. > > > > > > Penalties would help. If there were a penalty associated with the > > > break below 'B', then the break above it becomes more favourable. I do > > > not think the breaker could do that otherwise (without the newly > > > proposed rule). > > If there were a penalty value associated with a break that makes the > table longer, e.g. 0.1 * w, then the following list would result: > > 8) box w=9600 > 9) penalty p=0 w=0 > 10) box w=28800 > 11) penalty p=0 w=0 > 12) box w=0 //<-- this is where the second row starts > 13) penalty p=960 w=9600 //this penalty is due to the possible break after > "B" > 14) box w=28800 > 15) penalty p=0 w=0 //this is the next break poss after three lines > //due to the orphan setting > 16) box w=28800 > > Now a break at 12 would have 960 demerits. A break at 10 would have 0 > demerits, but because it would have less content on the page it would > have a larger stretch and that would itself associated demerits, say > 500. Then the break at 10 would be selected. > > In general, the table breaker may select breaks with a skew placement > of table contents, e.g. > > xxx | > | > ------|----- > | > xxx' | yyy > > over breaks with a more even placement of table contents, e.g. > > xxx | yyy' > | > ------|----- > | > xxx' | yyy" > > Such breaks are rather ugly. They also make the table considerably > longer. One can use the extra length of the table as a measure of > skew placement and thus of ugliness and of the penalty value > associated with this break. This makes that breaks with a skew > placement of content are disfavoured, and only selected when more > even breaks have lots of demerits themselves, due to other causes. > > Regards, Simon > > -- > Simon Pepping > home page: http://www.leverkruid.nl Jeremias Maerki
