Text::Widont - Suppress typographic widows

    use Text::Widont;

    # For a single string...
    my $string = 'Look behind you, a Three-Headed Monkey!';
    print widont($string, nbsp->{html});  # "...a Three-Headed Monkey!"

    # For a number of strings...
    my $strings = [
        'You fight like a dairy farmer.',
        'How appropriate. You fight like a cow.',
    ];
    print join "\n", @{ widont( $strings, nbsp->{html} ) };

Or the object oriented way:

    use Text::Widont qw( nbsp );

    my $tw = Text::Widont->new( nbsp => nbsp->{html} );

    my $string = "I'm selling these fine leather jackets.";
    print $tw->widont($string);  # "...fine leather jackets."

Collins English Dictionary defines a "widow" in typesetting as:

    A short line at the end of a paragraph, especially one that occurs as the
    top line of a page or column.

For example, in the text...

    How much wood could a woodchuck
    chuck if a woodchuck could chuck
    wood?

...the word "wood" at the end is considered a widow. Using Text::Widont, that sentence would instead appear as...

    How much wood could a woodchuck
    chuck if a woodchuck could
    chuck wood?

Text::Widont exports a hash ref, nbsp, that contains the following representations of a non-breaking space to be used with the widont function:

html

The   HTML character entity.

html_hex

The   HTML character entity.

html_dec

The   HTML character entity.

unicode

Unicode's "No-Break Space" character.

The widont function takes a string and returns a copy with the space between the final two words replaced with the given $nbsp. $string can optionally be a reference to an array of strings to transform. In this case strings will be modified in place as well as a copy returned.

In the absence of an explicit $nbsp, Unicode's No-Break Space character will be used.

Text::Widont also provides an object oriented interface.

Instantiates a new Text::Widont object. nbsp is an optional argument that will be used when performing the substitution. It defaults to Unicode's No-Break Space character.

Performs the substitution described above, using the object's nbsp property and the given string.

Text::Widont requires the following modules:

• Carp

Please report any bugs or feature requests to bug-text-widont at rt.cpan.org, or through the web interface at http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Text-Widont.

You can find documentation for this module with the perldoc command.

    perldoc Text::Widont

You may also look for information at:

* Text::Widont

http://perlprogrammer.co.uk/modules/Text::Widont/

* AnnoCPAN: Annotated CPAN documentation

http://annocpan.org/dist/Text-Widont/

* RT: CPAN's request tracker

http://rt.cpan.org/NoAuth/ReportBug.html?Queue=Text-Widont

* Search CPAN

http://search.cpan.org/dist/Text-Widont/

Dave Cardwell <dcardwell@cpan.org>

I was first introduced to the concept of typesetting widows and how they might be solved programatically by Shaun Inman.

http://www.shauninman.com/archive/2006/08/22/widont_wordpress_plugin

Copyright (c) 2007 Dave Cardwell. All rights reserved.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. See perlartistic.