<?breakt>
Description
The <?breakt> and <?breakb> commands allow you to change paragraph break settings mid-paragraph, and simplify the use of conditional settings in the paragraph style. In addition, they allow multiple actions in a single setting.
Example 444. Start a new page with a break command
Both the <?breakb> and <?breakt> commands share the same syntax: its simplest form would be:
<?breakt b2>
Example 445. Set multiple break options with cumulative values
The bit or value settings are cumulative, so if you also wanted to start a new page and start column centering you could use this pair of commands.
<?breakt b2><?breakt b7>
Example 446. Set multiple break options with combined values
Using the example above, 'Start new page' has a value 2 and 'Start column centering' has the value 64. These are combined to give the command:
<?breakt 66>
Example 447. Start a new table cell immediately with <?breakb>
The <?breakb> command can take one additional parameter to indicate that the effect should occur immediately, without waiting for an end of line or paragraph:
<?breakb b10,1>
Syntax
<?breakt bit or value:n immediate:n?>
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bit or value
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For each paragraph, PTC ALD stores two 32-bit numbers containing the break flags. The first number relates to top-breaks (breakt), effective at the beginning of a paragraph, and the second to bottom-breaks (breakb), effective at the end of the paragraph. Each of the numbers can hold up to 32 break flags, referenced by their corresponding binary bit numbers, 1 to 32. The current bit numbers are as follows:
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Description of break flag
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Bit no.
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Value
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Top / bottom / both
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Start new column
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b1
|
1
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both
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|
Start new page
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b2
|
2
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both
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|
Reposition to first line
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b5
|
16
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top
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|
Reposition to last line
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b6
|
32
|
top
|
|
Start column centring
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b7
|
64
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top
|
|
Flush to column bottom
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b8
|
128
|
top
|
|
Start new table cell
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b10
|
512
|
both
|
|
Start new table row
|
b11
|
1024
|
both
|
|
Finish table
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b12
|
2048
|
both
|
|
Soft column break
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b16
|
32768
|
bottom
|
|
Soft page break
|
b17
|
65536
|
bottom
|
|
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immediate
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Indicates if the effect should occur immediately, without waiting for an end of line or paragraph.
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|
This parameter does work for breakt but, for obvious reasons, is not as effective as for breakb.
|
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0
|
Do not effect immediately
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|
1
|
Effect immediately
|
|
Additional Information
PTC ALD provides several options for the placement of paragraphs, accessible from the > dialog box under Current paragraph and Before next paragraph. Values are stored in the lump attribute.
For top breaks to be effective for a paragraph, they must be specified before the first printable character (or any other item which causes the style-reading process to terminate, e.g. the <?> command).
Soft break can be used to start a new column or page at the end of a line without ending the current paragraph.
Soft overflow will cause the next line to be treated as if it was too big to fit at the current location. This can be used in tables to force mid-cell breaks to occur at a certain location when the <?tbovflow=2> command is being used.
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