Re: Elevated text blocks

[Aditya Mahajan <adityam@umich.edu>]

On Thu, 28 Dec 2006, Gerhard Kugler wrote:

> Hi Aditya,
> 
> thank you for your detailed answer.
> 
> The exercises are so much providing the structure of the book, that it
> may be that I will choose the format (size) of the page considering
> the solutions of your questions:

If choosing page size is an option, and there are only a few that are 
larger than a page, things may be much easier. Keep all of them in one 
page, and typeset. Note the ones that are larger than a page, and mark 
them using a differnt environment. That is, you decide which exercises 
should break and which should not.

> On Thu, Dec 28, 2006 at 11:48:06AM -0500, Aditya Mahajan wrote:
> 
> > 1. The current page is half full, and your exercise is half-page plus 
> > two lines. Should TeX leave the rest of the page empty and start a new 
> > page, or fill the current page with exercise and put two lines in the 
> > next page.
> 
> rather the second option. But it would be suboptimal.
> 
> > 
> > 2. The same case as above, but the text is one and a half page long.
> 
> In this case it would be clear, that the exercise begins instantly.
> 
> > 
> > 3. Or a more drastic case, when the current page has only two lines 
> > and the text block is exactly one page long. Should the text split or 
> > not.
> 
> No.

This seems inconsistent with case 1. There the text was less than one 
page, but you want it to be split. In this case, the text is exactly 
one page, but you do not want it to be split?

> > 
> > 4. Can you allow the text block to float, or should it occur where you 
> > place it, even if it means a lot of empty space on the page.
> 
> The text block must not float because it is part of the ongoing text.
> In some chapters there is more text in the exercises than outside.

Is something like this acceptable:

if length < 1 page
  keep the whole thing together, even if it means ending the current 
page with lots of empty space.

if length > 1 page
  split whereever you want

That would means, do a trial typesetting to find the length of the 
block, if length is less than one page put in a framedtext (which is 
just a highly customizable vbox) if length > 1 page, don't do anything 
and let it break pages anywhere. Just one more bit of information is 
needed. Do your exercises contain display math?

> > Basically, the difficulty is specifying how much blankspace on a page 
> > are you willing to accept, and under what conditions.
> 
> Perhaps I should fill blank parts of pages with elements of pure
> decoration. The English (American) original is shorter than the German
> text. Sometimes I have the impression that the authors have made
> content and appearance simultaneously. This is not reproducible in a
> translation.

This is always hard to do, and TeX glue makes it harder. Things can be 
bizzare when you want to fit all you can in page limits imposed in 
conferences: removing material takes more space, adding material 
reduces space, and you end up beating your head ;)

Aditya