Re: widows vs orphans

[Dave Kemper]

On 6/15/23, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> At 2023-06-15T15:10:41-0400, Peter Schaffter wrote:
>> I learned the following when I was an apprentice typesetter:
>> "Widows have no future and orphans have no past."
>
> If "future" and "past" mean "words {after, before} them on the page",
> then I find this mnemonic intuitive and easy to retain.
>
> I'd hesitate to add it to our official documentation for cultural
> reasons.[1]
> [1] It seems to imply a patriarchal view of a woman's utility after
>     marriage.

There are other formulations of the mnemonic that are less
patriarchal, but in groff documentation I don't think it's important
to include a rationale for the terms, merely to use them in the ways
they're generally understood.  Both terms are fairly infrequent in the
info manual, especially excluding the -ms-specific portion of it, and
I see no need to change that.  It's just the one newly introduced
usage that is at odds with typographer convention, and this is easy to
fix without adding or changing anything else.

> Perhaps we could employ terms like "forward stranding" and "backward
> stranding"?

I'm not opposed, but also am not sure I see the wisdom of introducing
alternate terms for concepts that have existing terms of art,
especially when those existing terms are not that prevalent in groff
docs.