[Tex/LaTex] \pagebreak vs \newpage

page-breakingvertical alignment

What's the difference? I know that \pagebreak can take an optional argument that specifies how much a page break is desired, but is there any difference if the optional argument is not used?

Best Answer

Both commands start a new page.

If the optional argument is not used, \pagebreak will start a new page and the paragraphs of the old page will be spread out so that the old page will not look like the end of a chapter.

With \newpage, on the other hand, the old page will have the blank space at the bottom, because the paragraphs will stick together as if the chapter had ended there.

This link will be useful, and the answer to a duplicate question (that was migrated from SO to this site later) gives the following example: alt text

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Conditional pagebreak

For such cases I like to use the needspace package. It provides commands that request customizable amount of space left on the page, and if there's not enough space then a page break would be inserted.

You could define a macro:

\usepackage{needspace}
\newcommand*{\solution}{%
  \Needspace{2\baselineskip}%
  \noindent\textsl{Solution}:%
}

This will have the effect, that a page break would be inserted before "Solution" if this would be the last line on the page, like you desired. You may increase the value in the argument of \Needspace if more space seems more appropriate.

The package defines further command variants \needspace (a bit more relaxed regarding the space amount) and \Needspace*, which respects a \flushbottom configuration in contrary to the unstarred command \Needspace, which causes a ragged bottom.

In every case I recommend to create a macro \solution which you may use later in your document. The reason is logical formatting - if you later decide to use \textbf instead of \textsl or a command like \section* or \subsection*, you need to change just the macro definition, not the whole text.

[Tex/LaTex] Removing spurious pagebreak in index

The problem seems quite abstract, because it's quite rare to have an index start without a page break. However, here is a possibility. Since you don't want page breaks, it's necessary to avoid any automatism in index generation.

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside,11pt]{book}

\usepackage[noautomatic,nonewpage]{imakeidx}
\usepackage{hyperref}

% declare new index files
\makeindex[name=names,title=Name Index,intoc]
\makeindex[name=titles,title=Title Index,intoc]
\indexsetup{level=\section*} % no page break with sections

\begin{document}

\tableofcontents

% generate fake index entries
\count255=0
\loop\ifnum\count255<200
  \index[names]{Surname\number\count255, Name\number\count255}
  \index[titles]{Title of Work\number\count255}
  \advance\count255 1
\repeat

\clearpage

\phantomsection
\section*{Test 1}
\addcontentsline{toc}{section}{Test 1}

\printindex[names]
\printindex[titles]

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Conditional pagebreak

[Tex/LaTex] Removing spurious pagebreak in index

Related Question