About the construction of lines in the MS

[quimqu]

The test I was thinking was: in each parag,

• Replace m by iin everywhere.
  
• Join lines into a single token stream.
  
• Feed that stream to the SLA with different rail width W.
  
• Measure the anomalies around the new line breaks.
  
• Compare with the anomalies seen in the original text.
  

I tried the test you suggested. 

As I understood it:

• TLA is just a simple line-breaking algorithm. You take a continuous text stream and cut lines at a fixed width WWW, without any special tricks.
  
• SLA is the same basic algorithm, but with an added abbreviation mechanism. It allows occasional iin -> m, and at line end it forces that abbreviation if it helps delay the break.
  

So I expanded m -> iin, joined each paragraph into one token stream, then relaid it with two width limits, using both a plain TLA and an SLA-style version with random iin -> m plus forced abbreviation at line end.

What I get is that the real line breaks are still much stronger than the new ones in all cases, which is fine. But the important part is that the SLA does not come out stronger than the plain TLA. On average it is actually slightly worse.

So with this implementation I am not seeing the pattern real > SLA > plain TLA. I am seeing more like real >> plain, and real >> SLA, with SLA <= plain
overall.