[luatex] Refuses to page break between section headings

[Steve Litt]

On Mon, 9 Mar 2015 21:27:13 +0100
Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:

> On 2015-03-09 at 18:24:57 +0100, luigi scarso wrote:
> 
>  > On Mon, Mar 9, 2015 at 5:28 PM, Jonas Olson <jolson at kth.se> wrote:
>  > 
>  > > Den 2015-03-09 16:35, Ulrike Fischer skrev:
>  > >
>  > >> But imho the source of your problem is the misuse of \section.
>  > >> Why are you using it if you actually don't want a section
>  > >> title? Why don't you define a command that is more suitable?
>  > >>
>  > >
>  > > I don't really know enough to construct a suitable command
>  > > myself, especially things like adding a vertical space above the
>  > > heading iff it is not the first thing on the page, and adding a
>  > > vertical space below the heading iff it has a text body.
>  > >
>  > > Jonas
>  > >
>  > something like this ?
>  > \documentclass[]{article}
>  > 
>  > \begin{document}
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  [....]
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > \section{A}\vfill\eject
>  > 
>  > \end{document}
> 
> Well, as far as I understand Jonas, not all sections are empty.  But
> if there are too many empty sections on one page, no pagebreak occurs
> and you get a big overfull \hbox.  Thus, I suppose that DPC's
> suggestion to insert pagebreaks manually (\clearpage) is an
> appropriate solution.
> 
> Ulrike, the reason Jonas [ab]uses \section is because this macro
> contains discardable vertical space i.e., the space above the section
> header disappears if the section begins at the top of a page.  This is
> exactly what Jonas wants, hence using \section is appropriate.
> 
> Writing a dedicated macro is certainly possible.  But unless the
> document is large or has to be revised in the future, inserting
> \clearpage manually where needed makes sense.  I suppose that Jonas
> needs a solution soon and is not interested in an everlasting reseach
> project.
> 
> Jonas, does \clearpage, as suggested by David, solve your problem?
> 
> Regards,
>   Reinhard

We don't know the exact nature of the Jonas' Funeral Program, but I'd
be willing to bet it's no more than ten pages long (5K words), and it's
clear that Jonas wants a strong degree of control over page placement
and page breaks. As such, *TeX is the wrong tool to be using. *TeX is
optimized to deliver stylistic consistency throughout a document, with
little or no human intervention on individual pages, and is
traditionally most necessary in long documents.

I bet that if Jonas did this task in Inkscape and/or Scribus, he'd have
the task complete in four hours, and it would be laid out *exactly* as
he wants, with no compromises.

https://inkscape.org/en/

http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Scribus

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance