Minipage spanning across pages

Question

I'm looking for a way to span minipages across pages in LaTeX.

I have a collection of recipes (presented through the recipe environment provided by the cuisine package) that varies in length, from something like 10 lines to more than can fit on a page. I want to fit as many as possible on one page and span the text across pages only if necessary. Until now I used the minipage environment that is sufficient if the content is not longer than a page.

Is there a way to get a "2 pages"-minipage or something similar ?

EDIT:

I have something like : texts A, B, C and D. I don't want them to span across pages if not necessary.

AAAABB (newpage) BBCCDD is not acceptable
AAAA (newpage) BBBB (newpage) CCDD is the desirable output

EDIT:

My content is a collection of recipes from the cuisine package.

I am not quite sure I understand the question. What is the reason to use a minipage in the first place? What is it about minipage environment that you need? Are you putting the texts in several columns? Would something like the flowfram package (http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/flowfram/) help? — Jan Hlavacek, Sep 17 '10 at 18:21
I'm using the minipage environment because it guarantees that the text contained doesn't span pages. But it is too strict for me ... — Thomas Schwery, Sep 19 '10 at 09:35
Example: assuming "A" means typeset text from recipe (a) of height 1/6th available height, AAAA BBBBCC DD looks like it fits your constraint. Is it acceptable? — Charles Stewart, Sep 20 '10 at 09:24

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 30 '13 at 22:28

Your specification is too vague. You want to fit as many onto one page as possible, but some are larger than a single page so they should be split. What's the criterion for allowing a split? I'd do something like this:

Typeset the recipe in a box and measure it.
If it's shorter than some constant length (say 40% the height of the page), then put it in a minipage on the page.
If it's longer, insert it onto the page without using minipage (hence allowing it to split)

Here's code to do something like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{lipsum,environ}
\newsavebox\recipebox
\newlength\recipebreaklength
\setlength\recipebreaklength{0.4\textheight}
\newcommand\typesetrecipe[1]{%
  \par\noindent\rule{\linewidth}{1ex}\par
  \BODY
  \par\noindent\rule{\linewidth}{1ex}\par
}
\NewEnviron{recipe}{%
  \savebox{\recipebox}{\parbox{\linewidth}{%
    \typesetrecipe{\BODY}%
  }}%
  \ifdim
      \dimexpr\ht\recipebox+\dp\recipebox\relax 
      > \recipebreaklength
    \typesetrecipe{\BODY}%
  \else
    \par\noindent\usebox\recipebox
  \fi
  \bigskip
}
\begin{document}
\raggedbottom
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[2]\end{recipe}
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[3]\end{recipe}
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[4]\end{recipe}
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[5]\end{recipe}
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[6]\end{recipe}
\begin{recipe}\lipsum[7-10]\end{recipe}
\end{document}

Can't the second occurence of \typesetrecipe{\BODY} just be \unvbox\recipebox? Then \BODY only gets evaluated once. — Charles Stewart, Sep 20 '10 at 09:30
Not the way that I coded it, unfortunately (coz there's another box inside). I always try to use LaTeX idioms for such demonstration code, and to use \unvbox I'd need to start from scratch with \setbox\recipebox=\vbox{\hsize=\linewidth...} kind of thing. But that would be the better way to do it, I agree. — Will Robertson, Sep 20 '10 at 09:47

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

3

You can put the text into a \vbox and test if it is too long to fit the page. If not, you can set it, otherwise you can \vsplit it across two pages.

I asked a somewhat similar question on SO, Making Latex typeset given text on two facing pages; Steve's answer can be tailored for your requirements.

edited May 23 '17 at 12:39

Community

1

answered Sep 19 '10 at 17:33

Charles Stewart

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score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 19 '10 at 10:22

1

Use the samepage environment for the stuff you want to stay on the same page. You'll likely need \raggedbottom as well.

answered Sep 19 '10 at 10:22

TH.

62,639

I'm using another environment to present my text (recipe) and it doesn't seem to "like" the samepage. The "recipes" are divided between pages. – Thomas Schwery Sep 19 '10 at 16:08
That's not really enough information to go on. Can you provide a minimum example that fails with samepage? – TH. Sep 19 '10 at 21:09

Minipage spanning across pages

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