Setting lines individually vs by paragraph (was Re: widows vs orphans)

[Dave Kemper]

On 6/15/23, Steve Izma <sizma@golden.net> wrote:
> One of its main
> points was to argue in favour of final aesthetic adjustments
> being made by humans as opposed to algorithms.

Well, of course the HUMAN typographer thinks that. ;->

> debates about the "paragraph-at-once" algorithms (which have
> never worked in a satisfying way to me when I have needed to
> typeset with TeX).

Accepting that no algorithm will produce perfect results, the question
isn't whether paragraph-at-once algorithms obviate the need for human
intervention, but whether they overall produce better results than
setting every line individually without regard for the surrounding
paragraph.  That is, which system leaves the human with less work to
do?