Re: JadeTeX and keep-with-next?

[David Carlisle <davidc@xxxxxxxxx>]

> > The only thing I found working right all of
> > the time was LaTeX's internal \@startsection command, using it the
> > way described in the LaTeX companion. However, I don't know whether
> > this is usable within jadetex.dtx.

\@startsection isn't useable in jadetex nor is any other high level
latex construct as jadetex takes a rather purist view of the dsssl
process (unlike say the html backend).

If you were to transform your section title elements to latex
sections (and thus use  \@startsection) then this would be easier
but then latex (and not dsssl) would be in control of the typographic
style of these elements. Note the HTML backend rather assumes that you
are going to map section titles to <h*> elements, which makes things
easier but means it isn't really a `back end' as it needs a different
stylesheet to drive it.

jadetex lets dsssl have full control down to explicit fonts and spacing
so by the time that tex gets hold of it, the concept of what is the
object that was being `kept with' is not that well defined. (Or rather
it is well defined, but not defined in a way easy to make tex
understand:-)

Apart from that, jadetex places \specials all over the place for
hypertext linking and colour, and these invariably break tex penalty and
vertical spacing, even in standard latex usage, without jadetex
complications. This is always a problem with TeX (control of vertical
space in TeX is essentially broken by design, something which may get
fixed in etex).

Of course none of this means that jadetex couldn't pick up more special
cases, and so get it right more often, but it does probably mean it will
never get it right 100% of the time, unless it switches to an improved
tex engine such as (some future version of) etex or e-pdftex.

David


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