[cl-typesetting-devel] More on laying out sub-boxes

[Ken McKee]

I read the thread from Jun 2005 regarding laying out boxes.
http://common-lisp.net/pipermail/cl-typesetting-devel/2005-June/ 
thread.html
Peter Seibel inquired about the natural size of content blocks. A  
better solution was found for his task, but I would like to pursue  
his original intent.

Our documents are comprised of sections, subsections and items.
We need, at least, to avoid splitting the items across pages.

Is there a way to ask cl-typesetting to keep a content block on the  
same page, even if means pushing the entire block to the next page?
This would satisfy our immediate needs.

If not, we can paginate the document ourselves. To do this (without  
falling back on cl-pdf) we will need to find the size of a block of  
content (a text-content?). In the end we might want to do this  
anyway. We have some options to layout an item. For example, they can  
be vertically or horizontally inclined. I can imagine that we would  
use cl-typesetting's features to layout the text within each content  
block, but our layout engine could adjust the options for the items  
to avoid splitting items and subsections.

Thanks,
Ken McKee
Duke University