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From: dougcc@csv.viccol.edu.au (Douglas Miller)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: LaTeX: widow lines
Message-ID: <1991Mar18.194506.6616@csv.viccol.edu.au>
Date: 19 Mar 91 00:45:06 GMT
References: <2302@borg.cs.unc.edu> <1991Mar14.212743.20145@csrd.uiuc.edu> <2312@borg.cs.unc.edu>
Organization: Computer Services, Victoria College, Melbourne
Lines: 42

In article <2312@borg.cs.unc.edu>, alexande@snuffy.cs.unc.edu (Geoffrey D. Alexander) writes:
> In article <1991Mar14.212743.20145@csrd.uiuc.edu> eijkhout@s41.csrd.uiuc.edu (Victor Eijkhout) writes:
> |alexande@grover.cs.unc.edu (Geoffrey D. Alexander) writes:
> |
> ||Is there a general way to avoid widow lines in LaTeX?  In particular, I would
> ||like to avoid a single line followed by display math at the top of a page.
> ||Also, having the display math at the top the page is not vaiable soltion; I
> ||would rather have two lines of text followed by the display math.
> |
> |Hm. This question once again shows that Lamport doesn't
> |treat the TeX primitives in his book sufficiently.
> |Comment in general for LaTeX users:
> |buy the TeX book too, for more info on math and such.
> |
> |The above question can be answered as follows:
> |the parameters \widowpenalty and \displaywidowpenalty
> |control exactly the two phenomena described.
> |Currently they are 150 and 50 respectively,
> |try setting them to 1000 or so. If you set them
> |to 10000 TeX will absolutely never break in these
> |places, which may be a bit too rigorous.
> |
> |Victor.
> 
> I was aware of these commands.  The questions is can I use them in LaTeX?
> If so, where and how do I specify them?

Q1:  Yes --- LaTeX is really just TeX after all :-)

Q3:  Like this:  \widowpenalty=1000

Q2:  Anywhere you like.  Actually, in keeping with the Hosek/Miller principle
     of structuralism I would recommend putting them in a style file, e.g.,
     you could make a style file called MYARTICLE.STY as follows:

        \input article.sty
        \widowpenalty=1000
        \displaywidowpenalty=1000

     and then start your document with

        \documentstyle{myarticle}