[css3-gcpm] Page breaks -- keep blocked text together

<http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/CR-css3-page-20040225/#page-breaks>

If I am reading this correctly, CSS3 seems to be limited to manual
insertion of page breaks to work past troublesome page breaks. I
suggest consideration of a more automated approach for reflowable
text, the marking of text spans that must remain together on the same
page, i.e., that will be treated as a block. So e.g., assuming a tag
named <keep-together>, a heading and the following two lines of text
might be marked as:

<keep-together>
Heading line 1
Heading line 2

Text line A
Text line B
</keep-together>
Text line C
Text line D, etc.

So for example, if the page break fell between Heading line 2 and Text
line A, the page break would be forced before Heading line 1. The
block protection would extend to the end of Text line B even if a
change in type size forced more words from Text line C back onto B.

If handled in this manner, repurposed text or a change in type size
and leading would not require manual inspection for bad page breaks of
this kind.

This approach also helps in the case of text where the author wishes
to avoid breaking a page on a hyphenated word.

Downside: inserting new text within an already marked block can cause
more lines to be protected from page breaks than intended.

Feature suggestion shamelessly borrowed from WordPerfect 5.1.

Best regards,

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. (Marbux)

-- 
Universal Interoperability Council
<http:www.universal-interop-council.org>

Received on Friday, 8 August 2008 08:36:18 UTC