Long table forcing page break

[david]

(I'm actually a Blaze user, but that forum doesn't look too active, so I'm posting here instead)
I have a long table that runs for more than one page. In pdf output, the table seems to be forcing a page break in the following place:

H2
<page break>
H3
long table

I don't want the page break after the H2. I don't want any page break at all. My H2 style is set to "page break after: avoid." The H3 is style is set to "page break before: avoid, page break after: avoid."

Any ideas on how to get rid of this page break?
Thanks.

[ChoccieMuffin]

You may need to adjust the <td>, <tr>, <table> and other table styles. Clearly if the table's more than one page long the topic has to break SOMEWHERE, it's just a question of the least annoying place for it to break.

If you look at the stylesheet in advanced view, in the first drop-down just above the list of styles select "show table styles" to see those that apply particularly to tables. Also if you insert <p> paragraphs inside your table cells you might need to do something in them too.

When setting page-break-before, page-break-after and page-break-inside, try to give Flare an elegant way out and don't set every single cell, row and table to avoid breaks both before or after, or it'll just get upset with you, and will override your heading page break settings, as you have found.

Also you might want a heading row if your table goes onto the next page.

[david]

Sorry for the late reply on this, but I did want to thank you for your suggestions. I don't see anything strange in the table styles you mention--I was looking at the page break settings for the PrintSupport property, and no breaks were set. Any other suggestions? I do have a support plan with MadCap, so there's always that...

[Ken S]

Hi David,

I've experienced this problem as well. It seems to occur whenever the paragraph immediately before the table is either a heading (H1, H2, etc.) or paragraph set up in the CSS file to keep with the next paragraph (i.e., "page-break-after: avoid;"). Changing the CSS properties of the H3 or inserting a body paragraph between the H3 and the table might fix the problem.

[david]

Nothing's working, but thanks anyway, Ken!

[ChoccieMuffin]

I'm not quite sure how I managed to do it, but I find if you break the table at the appropriate point, it seems to fix it. I don't know how I did it (IIRC I copied the table, pasted the copy directly below the original, deleted the end part from the first table and deleted the beginning part from the second table). In the bars down the left-hand side you do see "table" twice, rather than a single table.

That seemed to do the trick, even though it's a bit manual for my preferences, and I haven't quite figured out the mechanics of it. (I figured that if it works, that's good enough for me, and I have enough other things I need to worry about that don't work adequately!)

[david]

When I get a chance, I'll see about doing something like that. It's a hack, but it might work. Thanks!

[ChoccieMuffin]

I've just had a thought: does a table get inserted inside a DIV? If so, then you might want to look and see if the DIV has the break-inside attribute set to avoid. You would need to set it to Auto or Allow or whatever the option is. (Experts - jump in and explain it better, please).

[LTinker68]

Tables don't normally get inserted inside a DIV unless the author specifically sets it up that way. That said, sometimes Flare will throw in something you weren't expecting in order to try to get the appearance you want, the most notable being that if you set a list to outside-head, I think, Flare inserts multiple tables, one for each list item, to get the desired effect. But again, I wouldn't expect it to throw a table inside a div.

The basic rules of CSS are that the style definitions closest to the text wins. So if your text is inside a paragraph inside a table cell, then the paragraph styles will override the td styles which will override the table styles. Likewise if you have a list inside a table cell or an image inside a table cell. And you should be able to put a div inside a table cell, although I've never tried it, so the div would override the td and so on. If any of those styles have page break definitions, then they'll be honored first, which might result in the page break on a heading being ignored in favor of honoring the page break on content inside the table.