Why not spend the effort exploring the problem at the browser implementation level? Is there opportunity to get NYT eng time dedicated to it?
I'm not sure I agree, if it enhances readability. The users are there to read articles, so this is exactly the right place to spend spare CPU cycles.
Of course, it should be optimized as much as possible, and it sounds like the NYT's implementation was not very optimized. Then again, it also sounds like the NYT only briefly experimented with their version, and does not use it today.
> Why not spend the effort exploring the problem at the browser implementation level?
Well, but the NYT is not fundamentally a technology company, so pushing for browser changes seems beyond their scope IMO. Adobe did try, for their part.
> In 2013, Adobe proposed a new CSS text-wrap: balance property to make the browser do (and optimize) the heavy lifting. TextBalancer is a JavaScript implementation of this CSS property. The property has yet to be implemented into any web browsers. (Come on, guys! It’s in CSS Text Level 4.)