Re: keep-together question

Hi Matthew

While I can't speak to the integer-keep support, from what I can make out here, it does seem like you would be greatly helped by decent orphans/widows support.

Assuming that you know that at most N lines will fit together on a page, you could specify orphans="N" on the parent block, which will have exactly the effect I think you are seeking. That is: if a paragraph/block ends, and there is no more room for N lines, the next paragraph would automatically start on a new page, but would still allow breaking after the Nth line (in other words: it acts like a keep-together on the first N lines in a block). You could play with slightly lower values to avoid leaving too much empty space on a page, or combine with a widows="..." setting for paragraphs that you know will take up multiple pages. It would still require a couple of tries to arrive at the nicest looking result, but at least, it is a bit less black-and-white than a forced keep-together of the entire block.

First, the bad news: FOP 2.1 (and trunk) still does not support that.

The good news: there is a patch available in JIRA (look for FOP-1488), which I worked on quite some time back, and which I believe one of our committers --Matthias-- is already using. It will take a quick stroll, probably, to make sure it can easily be applied to trunk. I synched it up last year, and as I recall, not a lot has changed since then to those areas in the code, so I'll see if I can at least update that shortly. I really should work on committing it to trunk anyway, so we can finally close that and at least get it in for a next release.

Just one question left: Are you fluent enough in Subversion, Ant etc. to check out the trunk, apply the patch and build FOP, or would you require a binary package to try it out? I guess I could always (temporarily) attach one in JIRA for you to download, or deliver it some other way, if that helps.

Let me know.


Andreas

> On 25 Feb 2016, at 19:12, Matthew R. Wilson <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2016 at 09:41:20AM +0100, Pascal Sancho wrote:
>> That can be achieved using an integer value rather than 'always'.
>> See [1] (compliance page) & [2] (XSL-FO rec v1.1) for further info.
>> 
>> NOTE: keep-together should be considered as a shorthand for
>> *.within-line, *.within-column, and *.within-page
> 
> I've tried using an integer value, but that doesn't seem to do anything.
> For example, changing my original example attachment to the following
> snippet
> 
>  <fo:block keep-together.within-page="100">
>    <fo:block>line 1</fo:block>
>    <fo:block>line 2</fo:block>
>    <!-- ... more ... -->
>    <fo:block>line n</fo:block>
>  </fo:block>
> 
> does not do what I expect. Even though this block can fit on a page, I
> don't end up with a page break before it and it just breaks in the
> middle. The same block with keep-together.within-page="always" results
> in the expected page break before the block. I've removed all other
> keeps in the document so there shouldn't be anything conflicting with
> the attempt to make this block appear on its own page.
> 
> The FOP compliance page says that there is "Minimal support for
> <integer> values", but I don't see anything explaining further. So I'm
> back to not knowing if I'm just not doing it right (i.e. is there
> something more to it than changing "always" to "100"), or am I hitting a
> scenario that isn't supported by the minimal support.
> 
> Thanks,
> Matthew
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected]
> For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
>