Page breaking primitives

The physical lines in a document are broken into pages in a way similar to how paragraphs are hyphenated into lines. The page breaker performs page filling, it tries to distribute page items evenly so text runs to the bottom of every page. It also tries to avoid orphans and widows, which are single or pairs of soft lines separated from the rest of their paragraph by a page break, but these can be produced when there is no better solution.

<no-page-break>
(prevent automatic page breaking after this line)

Prevent the occurrence of an automatic page break after the current line. Set an infinite page breaking penalty for the current line, similarly to no-break.

Forbidden page breaking points are overridden by “new page” and “page break” primitives.

<no-page-break*>
(prevent automatic page breaking before this line)

Similar to no-page-break, but set the page breaking penalty of the previous line.

<new-page>
(start a new page after this line)

Cause the next line to appear on a new page, without filling the current page. The page breaker will not try to position the current line at the bottom of the page.

<new-page*>
(start a new page before this line)

Similar to new-page, but start the new page before the current line. This directive is appropriate to use in chapter headings.

<page-break>
(force a page break after this line)

Force a page break after the current line. A forced page break is different from a new page, the page breaker will try to position the current line at the bottom of the page.

Use only to fine-tune the automatic page breaking. Ideally, this should be a hint similar to line-break, but this is implemented as a directive, use only with extreme caution.

<page-break*>
(force a page break before this line)

Similar to page-break, but force a page break before the current line.

When several “new page” and “page break” directives apply to the same point in the document, only the first one is effective. Any new-page or page-break after the first one in a line is ignored. Any new-page or page-break in a line overrides any new-page* or page-break* in the following line. Any new-page* or page-break* after the first one in a line is ignored.

© 2004 David Allouche, Joris van der Hoeven
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".