batch page composition feature request

I think I alluded to this a long while ago, but never followed up.

Anyway, here's a feature request --- perhaps the ERT inset could 
instead be a little pop-up menu populated w/ the number of lines one 
could gain / lose and the initial value being a comment w/ the number 
of lines? Say something like:

initial menu:
[0 (+/-0)] (for a paragraph which can't gain / lose)
[0 ( +1/-0] (for a paragraph which can gain one line, but not lose any)
[0 (+2/-1] (for a paragraph which can gain two or lose one)

and when popped up, the last one would look like:
[+2]
[+1]
[0 (+2/-1)]
[-1]

Anyway, here's a post I just made to a thread on comp.text.tex about 
this sort of thing.

David Kastrup wrote:
>> I am working on typesetting books with quite long paragraphs, a fixed
>> line spacing and page layout, where widows on particular and also
>> clubs are frowned upon.  Given the length of the paragraphs, if TeX
>> were to do combined pagebreak/linebreak optimization, most clubs and
>> widows could be avoided easily (by effectively using \looseness for
>> removing them).  As it is, I can only avoid them on pages with
>> footnotes, and only by giving sufficiently stretchably interfootnote
>> spacing.

and Giuseppe asked:
>Multipass processes?

Well, that's the traditional way to fix it.

Find a page w/ a widow or orphan line, look back through the pages, 
find a paragraph which _might_ be amenable to gaining or losing a line, 
add \looseness+/-1% before it and re-tex and see.

As I've noted in the past, I'd dearly love a mechanism whereby TeX 
could evaluate a paragraph and note how many lines it could gain or 
lose and stick that into the output (say as a .pdf annotation). Better 
still would be if LyX (say) could grab that and add it as an ERT (Evil 
Red Text --- raw (La)TeX code) comment above each paragraph.

It was funny, a while back I posted all that I'd learned of page makeup 
to the TYPO-L list asking, ``Is there nothing more? Is this all there 
is to know / do?'' and didn't get a single reply or comment. Later 
correspondence revealed a number of people had printed out my post, and 
used it as a guideline in their composition, or when outsourcing....

William
(who is also going to post this to the LyX list, in hope some developer 
there will find it interesting)
--
William Adams, publishing specialist
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www.atlis.com