Page breaks in Web Layout

In Web Layout one shouldn't expect _*any*_ page breaks whatsoever, as by
definition it should not have a concept of pages. However, Writer sometimes
(and not so consistently) generates pages.

In some documents Writer generates dozens of pages in Web Layout, but
"Update All" reduces them to a few pages only. During editing, when layout
formatting is triggered again, the pages change (both where they are split
and their number).

For comparison, the same document when opened in MS Word one immediately
notices two differences (well, three). First, there is exactly 1 page in
web view (the equivalent to Web Layout) and no other. Second, the table of
contents show the page numbers as they would appear in the Print Layout
(great feature, imho,) unlike Writer which shows the page numbers in the
Web Layout (which is next to useless). (The third is simply how fast
formatting is in Word's web view, which is reasonable as there is hardly
any pagination necessary beyond line-break calculation).

I've tried tracing why and how Writer creates these phantom pages in Web
Layout but my search doesn't seem to be productive so far. I learned that
resizing the window can cause _more_ pages to be generated! In fact, a
document that has no extra pages in Web Layout can be made to have multiple
pages by simply making its window smaller and smaller (it seems to be due
to the relationship between the font-size, page zoom, and the window
dimensions).

I did notice that recent commits (post new year) have improved the
situation a little (fewer pages are now generated for the same documents
than using 4.4 or an older master build).

**Does anyone know what's going on? Has anyone tried to fix this? Can
anyone help me if there are no active efforts towards the same end?**