Widow control

[william humphrey]

Thanks
many lines of text as follows. "$" symbol changes where it is depending on
text inpot

$line one
line two
$line three
$line four
line five
line six
$line seven
$line eight
$line nine
line ten

now lets say the field to put the text into is four lines long. We want to
avoid widows so text would break up like this.

 field iteration # 1-- page 1 of 3
$line one
line two
$line three
<break>

field iteration #2 -- page 2 of 3
$line four
line five
line six
$line seven
<break> -- happens to fail on exactly fourth line

field iteration #3 -- page 3 of 3
$line eight
$line nine
line ten
<break> -- ran out of data

This widow control thing is a common attribute of page layout programs. I'm
making a manifest for shipping and I'm trying to avoid having the cargo
information for a bill of lading header fall on the next page. The dollar
symbols are actually not there but I can look for what is there which is
actually lack of header information in that line of data.

The problem becomes harder for me to wrap my head around because I also need
to put page 1 of total pages on each page.

Thanks for your interest and help.

Bill