Re: A <PAGEBREAK> tag wanted!

> Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 13:15:33 -0500 (EST)
> From: BP Jonsson <melroch@yahoo.com>
> To: www-html@w3.org
> Subject: A <PAGEBREAK> tag wanted!
> 
> as an HTML author and reader I would very much appreciate if there
> were a tag to indicate a point where the author would find it a good
> idea to insert a pagebreak when printing out an HTML page, if the
> point appears a certain number of lines before the bottom of a page. 
> This should be default behavior of headings; they should NEVER become
> widows on a printout.

This can already be done using CSS2.  I don't know whether browsers
support it -- if you want this feature supported, bug the browser
makers.  CSS2 has a large section on rules for page breaks [1], which
includes the properties page-break-before, page-break-after,
page-break-inside, widows, and orphans.  CSS2 offers considerably more
power than adding another presentational tag for a specific medium to
HTML.

For example, one could have the stylesheet:

H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6 {
  page-break-before: auto; /* the default */
  page-break-inside: avoid; /* no page breaks inside... */
  page-break-after: avoid; /* ... or after */
  }

H1 {
  page-break-before: always; /* begin new chapters; overrides previous rule */
  }

P {
  orphans: 3; /* default is 2 */
  widows: 3; /* default is 2 */
  }

Further discussion of these properties should be on www-style@w3.org .

David Baron

[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/page.html#page-breaks

-----------------------------------------------------------------
L. David Baron    Freshman, Harvard    dbaron@fas.harvard.edu
Links, SatPix, CSS, etc.  < http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~dbaron/ >
WSP CSS AC                < http://www.webstandards.org/css/ >

Received on Thursday, 25 February 1999 13:30:43 UTC