Re: Feature request: export form feed as page break

[Ihor Radchenko]

Marvin Gülker <post+orgmodeml@guelker.eu> writes:

> ....
> To ease this process, I would like to request that the ASCII control
> character U+000C FORM FEED (displayed by emacs as ^L and also known as
> `\f' in C string notation) is recognised by exporters and translated to
> the corresponding page break command, that is, in LaTeX \newpage and in
> ODT to the XML that makes LibreOffice start a new page. For HTML, it
> could be exported as <div style="clear: both; page-break-after:
> always"/></div> or similar, and for exporters which have no notion of
> pages, it could just be copied over to the exported document as-is.

See https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87mtamjrft.fsf@localhost/

In general, adding page breaks can make sense. The main concern is that
the location of page breaks may or may not be export
backend-independent. In certain scenarios, you may need to put page
breaks in one place for odt export, but in other place in LaTeX export
(for example, when page size is different in these two cases).

Below are some of my personal notes on this topic:

Page breaks is one of the common typographical settings people do use.

- In LaTeX, this is easy to achieve simply putting =\clearpage=
- However, in exports like odt, the page break may be tricky and involve direct 
xml - not great
  https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87leq49bu0.fsf_-_@posteo.net/
  
- Page breaks even make sense in text files (ASCII or even directly in Org)
  https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/87mtamjrft.fsf@localhost
  
- Page breaks are directly supported by Emacs (filling), alongside with 
hard-newlines
  https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/875yhiyxnb.fsf@localhost
  

We may as well add a new element to Org that marks page breaks.

+ Page break should be an object as page breaks do not necessarily split 
paragraphs
+ People also want page breaks to precede certain elements (most importantly, 
headlines)
  + This is somewhat unrelated issue though -- too complex just for a single 
syntax element
    + It would be more productive to introduce generalized syntax to prepend 
actual Org elements during export

- page breaks location is very much backend-dependent; typographic detail
  https://list.orgmode.org/orgmode/875yhiyxnb.fsf@localhost

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
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