orphans/widows how madcap say they work

[iand]

I thought the following exchange with MadCap support might help people understand how orphans/widows work. It wasn't quite how I expected...

Widow / orphan controls govern content within a single tag (e.g. a <p> tag with three lines of text in it would be prohibited from leaving one or two lines on the other side of a page break if the widow and orphan controls for the <p> element were each set to a value of "2"). Widow / orphan controls do not come into play at all in a situation where the content in your topic is organized into many different tags, each with only one or two lines of text, as is the case here.

Personally I feel this is a bug and that orphan/widow settings should always apply. What do other people think?

Cheers

Ian

[Nita Beck]

(Quoting MadCap:) Widow / orphan controls do not come into play at all in a situation where the content in your topic is organized into many different tags, each with only one or two lines of text, as is the case here.

Ian, without being able to see how you've got your content organized, it's hard to offer an opinion. Perhaps if you'd show us an example of what you were trying to accomplish we could then answer your question. What exactly doesn't satisfy you in your output with regard to widows and orphans?

Nita

[LTinker68]

Personally I feel this is a bug and that orphan/widow settings should always apply. What do other people think?

If you have three paragraph tags that have two sentences each and your paragraph tags have a bottom margin of 6pt, for example, then yes, I would expect this. It's the same way in Word -- each paragraph is evaluated separately. I'm assuming FrameMaker is the same way.

[SteveS]

I thought the following exchange with MadCap support might help people understand how orphans/widows work. It wasn't quite how I expected...

Widow / orphan controls govern content within a single tag (e.g. a <p> tag with three lines of text in it would be prohibited from leaving one or two lines on the other side of a page break if the widow and orphan controls for the <p> element were each set to a value of "2"). Widow / orphan controls do not come into play at all in a situation where the content in your topic is organized into many different tags, each with only one or two lines of text, as is the case here.

Personally I feel this is a bug and that orphan/widow settings should always apply. What do other people think?

Cheers

Ian

This might work to your advantage...

Create a div tag (keep_together or something) and apply the page_break properties to the tag. That way you can apply your keep together to as much text as you like

[KevinDAmery]

I thought the following exchange with MadCap support might help people understand how orphans/widows work. It wasn't quite how I expected...

Widow / orphan controls govern content within a single tag (e.g. a <p> tag with three lines of text in it would be prohibited from leaving one or two lines on the other side of a page break if the widow and orphan controls for the <p> element were each set to a value of "2"). Widow / orphan controls do not come into play at all in a situation where the content in your topic is organized into many different tags, each with only one or two lines of text, as is the case here.

Personally I feel this is a bug and that orphan/widow settings should always apply. What do other people think?

Cheers

Ian

Uhhhmmmm, how else are you expecting it to work?

* If you have a 3 line paragraph, it would have to put the entire paragraph on one side of the break or the other, otherwise it is leaving a one line orphan on one side or the other. Any way that you split a 3 line paragraph you're going to end up with a one line orphan. End result, it breaks at a paragraph break rather than inside the paragraph.
* If you have a 2 line paragraph, it also would have to put the entire paragraph on one side or the other, since splitting it would result in a pair of one-line orphans. End result, it breaks at a paragraph break rather than inside the paragraph.
* If you have a 1 line paragraph, well, it can't split it at all, so it has to break at a paragraph break.

I'm not sure what alternatives there would be that make sense.

[iand]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies. After further consideration, including reading the feedback here, I now see that the way orphans/widows work is correct; I think I had the wrong expectations. Hopefully this will help other people who have the same misconception.