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From: dorai@titan.rice.edu (Dorai Sitaram)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Restricting pagebreaks within a paragraph in LaTeX
Message-ID: <1990Aug20.232119.3742@rice.edu>
Date: 20 Aug 90 23:21:19 GMT
References: <8140@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> <RJC.90Aug20183107@brodie.uk.ac.ed.cstr>
Sender: news@rice.edu (News)
Organization: Rice University, Houston
Lines: 48

In article <RJC.90Aug20183107@brodie.uk.ac.ed.cstr> rjc@uk.ac.ed.cstr (Richard Caley) writes:
$In article <8140@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) writes:
$
$    In article <38193@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, kirkaas@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (paul kirkaas) writes...
$
$    >I am looking for a way to prohibit page breaking within certain paragraphs
$    >with LaTeX.  Specifically in \verse mode, I have 4 line stanzas that I
$    >want to be unbroken.  Between stanzas, paged breaking is acceptable.
$    >I have tried the various LaTeX commands that seemed obvious, but to no
$    >avail.  Any suggestions?
$
$    Between lines, try using \\* rather than \\ (take a look at the
$    entry for \\ in the reference manual section of the LaTeX
$    manual).
$
$Probably a stupid question but...
$
$Is there any way to do this `automatically'; that is, how can I define
$an environment which will keep a given block of text on one page
$without either having to end each line with \\* ( thus making the
$whole thing unreadable ) or putting it in a vbox ( which will set the
$glue and prevent the normal line spacing adjustments ).

You could enclose the stuff that should be in one page in a \samepage
declaration (see LaTeX manual).  Thus:

{\samepage 
\begin{verse}
This, dear reader, is the first line of my poem;\\
And this is the second, wait, don't go hoem;\\
...
\end{verse}
}

Talking of readability, \\ isn't a whole lot more readable than \\*,
is it?  I prefer (see TeXbook):

\obeylines{
This, dear reader, is the first line of my poem
And this is the second, wait, don't go hoem
...
}

If you're going to typeset an epic or a play in vers libre, it's
rather obvious which approach is better, no?  Once again, relevant
sections should be enclosed in \samepage's.

--d