Section headings orphaned at page bottom + poetry verse lines split across pages

Question

I'm typesetting Proverbs (single-column, A5) and running into two related pagination issues I can't figure out how to fix.

1. Section heading stranded at the bottom of a page

In the first screenshot, the section heading "Hagatá mənda təkəda marakw" appears near the bottom of the page with only the first line of v. 13 below it before the page breaks. I'd expect PTXprint to push the heading (plus at least 2-3 lines of the following text) onto the next page together. Is there a setting that controls how many lines must follow a section heading before a page break is allowed? Something like a "keep with next" threshold?

2. Two-line poetry verses split across a page break

In the second screenshot, a verse that's only two lines of poetry gets split so that the first line lands at the bottom of one page and the second line starts the next page. For poetry especially, this really hinders readability since a two-line verse should stay together. Is there a way to tell PTXprint to keep short verse units (say, 2-3 lines) together, or to set a minimum number of poetry lines that must remain together before/after a page break?

Any pointers appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

I can tell you how this is done with Publishing Assistant (and I'll assume the same process can be used in PTXPrint. Since the lines you are displaying are "complete" paragraphs it is difficult to set rules that change how those paragraphs stay together.
In Publishing Assistant/InDesign I would either expand or contract paragraphs to either pull another line of text up or push lines of text down. This sometimes requires going back two or three pages to be able to adjust enough to move the text as I want it moved.

In Poetry, this gets very complicated and in PA/InDesign I will sometimes simply push the line to the next page (and leave an extra blank line at the bottom) so that the text reads correctly. I'm not sure how to best accomplish this in PTXPrint.

Answer 2

There are a couple of features in PTXprint that might help you avoid single \q1 lines after a heading.

First try turning off this setting on the Body tab, as it won't allow Widow and Orphan lines:

Another technique would be to use this snippet (copy these two lines into your ptxprint-mods.tex file) to keep \q2 and \q3 lines together with the previous \q1 and \q2 at all times.

\sethook{before}{q2}{\nobreak}
\sethook{before}{q3}{\nobreak}

Comments

Thanks, Mark. Took me a moment to find ptxprint-mods.tex. In case anyone else is looking, it's activated under Advanced → "Apply Customized Settings (ptxprint-mods.tex)" and then there's an "Edit" button which takes you to the corresponding tab under View+Edit.

We only have \q1 so I changed the snippet accordingly. That solved the Two-line poetry verses split across a page break problem but introduced the page break problems mentioned in the docs. Long sections of \q now run clean off the page (e.g., Pro 2). For this, I guess we could add additional \b unless there are other solutions to consider.