How to make a two column paragraph kept together on a page?

Question

I got stuck with a problem using XSL-FO to generate a PDF.

I have a document with two columns and I want to make a paragraph (which can start on the bottom of a page if there is space) to be kept on one page, without any page breaks. The main purpose would be to shift the paragraph to the next page. I can not use declared page-break before the paragraph because the previous contents are dynamic. The text itself has one line break which has to be kept(white-space-collapse=false) and there is a spanned line after it to make it displayed in two columns on the top of the page. Things I already tried:

• keep-together-within-page=always on the paragraph but nothing changes
• keep-together=always on the paragraph, everything is displayed in one line. Set keep-together-within-line=0 and keep-together-within-column=0, everything (8 lines of text) goes into the right column on second page but two lines stay in the left on previous page o_0
• page-break-inside=avoid on the paragraph, kills the column-break as well

The base xsl-fo code of the paragraph which has to be modified to be kept on one page:

<fo:block font-family="Font name" font-size="8.5pt" font-weight="normal" keep-with-next.within-column="always" line-height="10.5pt" orphans="5" text-align="left" widows="5">
<fo:block white-space-collapse="false">TEXT IN TWO COLUMNS</fo:block>

I can change the attributes of each block but changing the first one only would be the optimal solution.

Thanks in advance :]

Answer 1

Have you tried with

keep-with-previous.within-column="always"

It will firstly check the previous column then make the arrangement according to that.

Answer 2

keep-together.within-column="always" should give you what you need without leaving orphaned lines, and it is an inherited property and so need not be specified on every block if it is specified on an ancestral block. However, in your code snippet, you have specified keep-with-next= which is not inherited.

Only some properties are inherited, not all. Check pages 440/441 of my XSL-FO book, a "try and buy" version found for free at http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/#pfux (note the page numbers are for the A4 version; see pages 438/439 of the US-letter version).