What are "orphan" and "widow" properties?

There are properties called "orphan" and "widow" what exactly are they? What do they do and how are they used?

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Orphans and widows have to do with starting a paragraph on one page and finishing it on the next. You'd use these settings to not have just 1 line on the end of one page and the rest on the next. You'd want at least 2 or so on a page before the break or just start the whole thing on the next. They work in BIRT on text, data, and label elements, not on tables and such because of the avoid page break within settings available that handle these situations.

Hope this helps.

kosta

What about on text in a table ?

kosta

Hi Michael,

I have attached a file (

kosta

I want to mention here that "orphan" and "widow" doesn't work at all. Like the "line hieght" the properies are define but ignored if exporting to PDF.

mwilliams

The "Avoid" option for page breaks should handle this. I think 2.5+ has the "Avoid" page break inside setting that you can set.

kosta

Hi Michael,

How I think it should work:
- If I set orphan to 3 then then min 3 lines or more should be seen on the bottom of the (current) page or whole text block should go to the next page.
- If I set widow to 3 then then min 3 lines or more should be seen of the top of the (next) page or whole text block should go to the next page or the break should be calculate again.

Thats how it is implemented in OpenOffice Writer. Is the implementiation in BIRT like in OpenOffice or does it have another logic/calculation because this is not happening in the exported PDF and doc file.

Thank you in advance.

mwilliams

I think the orphan/widow settings work for an individual text, but not for the table. If you set the page break inside to "Avoid", BIRT attempts to avoid splitting the element over two pages, unless it's unavoidable. You'll have to log an enhancement request in the Eclipse.org bugzilla for the orphan/widow settings. If you do, please post the bug/request info in here for future reference. What is the issue you're having with the "avoid" page break inside setting? Is it not avoiding the page break inside or is it leaving too much whitespace, which is why you want the orphan/widow settings?

kosta

I want the orphan/widow settings because I have a list with group and in it group text, and 3 detail description texts. the third text is larger and somethimes it goes to the next page.

one list loop:
group Text - in group header
text0 in detail part - page break after: avoid
text1 in detail part - page break after: avoid
text2 in detail part - Section.display: inline

Somethimes two list loops are on one page and the "text2" is going to the other page. I saw a scenario where only one row was written on the next page in a PDF export. There the whole thing began. The orphan and widow values were set to their default means 2 but the text was less then one row on the next page. That was suspect.

kosta

Bug 377601 created.
https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=377601