Strange orphan behavior in tables

[Andy Kass]

"Lynne A. Price" <lprice at txstruct.com> wrote:
> Are you asking why the second row isn't placed on the first page
> or why a 3-row table with an orphan setting of 2 breaks at all?

Either way. Something was inconsistent for me, so thanks for confirming you see the behavior as well.

In the para designer, this feature is clearly labeled widow/orphan control, but the table designer controls refer only to orphans, so I thought that maybe tables handle only orphan rows, despite the documentation. But the behavior we're seeing is clearly setting the *widow* rows for small tables (assuming this definition of widows and orphans is correct: http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers/2005-December/000401.html).

Note that for tables with more than 2 x OrphanRows, the orphan row setting behaves as an orhpan and widow setting.

> If you want FM to use available space at the bottom of a page
> for the 2nd row, change the orphan setting to 1.

But my templates have the orphan setting of 2, and I would prefer not deal with table format overrides. However, I think I will just do it to get around this issue.

> I have confirmed the behavior you report, that FM (I tested 7.2, 8,
> and 9), will break a 3-row table after the first row even with an
> orphan setting of 2. Since, quoting from the FM 9 UG, "The orphan
> row property determines the minimum number of body rows that must
> be kept together on a page or in a column.", this behavior is indeed
> a bug", in either the documentation or the software. What FM seems
> to actually be doing could be described as "The orphan row property
> determines the minimum number of body rows that must be kept
> together after a page break or column break."

I actually don't mind breaking a small table, since I have fairly tall rows. And if it does break like that, having orphans is better than having widows. However, not being able to use the space created at the bottom of the page makes it all useless. Maybe my tables are haunted by the ghost of the widow's spouse.

Thanks,

  Andy

At 04:06 PM 6/26/2009, Andy Kass wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>I'm working in unstructured FrameMaker 8 (p277) on Windows XP, and I'm 
>noticing that tables have spacing issues at the bottom of a page when they 
>have less than twice the number of orphan rows.
>
>For example, if I have a table with 3 rows (regardless of heading rows) 
>that has an orphan setting of 2, the last 2 rows will move to the next 
>page when there isn't space for the whole table. However, if the table 
>moves down the page, or if that first row expands vertically, it jumps to 
>the next page before it fills the whitespace below it.
>
>In fact, after some testing, it appear that the whitespace below the first 
>row can never be less than the height of the second row of the table. You 
>can actually expand the second row of the table, the one after the page 
>break, and cause the first row to jump after the break.
>
>I don't have any "keep with" or "start on" settings on any of the rows, so 
>I can't figure out what is causing this behavior. Has anyone else see 
>this, is it a known bug? Is there a workaround?
>
>Thanks,
>
>   Andy
>
>akass at jaspersoft.com