4D Write Pro – Elevate your documents’ layout with linked paragraphs

The layout of documents is a vital topic in many businesses, and there are many parameters to consider. To have even more precise control over the appearance of documents, it is now possible to link paragraphs together.

Link paragraphs in 4D Write Pro documents

Rules

Some rules are already known and applied in 4D Write Pro, such as managing “widows and orphans,” “unbreakable paragraphs,” etc.
Today and starting with 4D v19 R5, it is also possible to determine if a paragraph and the one that follows it must remain linked, i.e. not be separated by a page or column break.

Some examples

The simplest example is that of a title followed by content. The title is on one or two lines, and the following article, which can be much longer than the title, can be spread over several pages or columns. The critical thing, in this case, is that the title is not separated from the beginning of the article. If several “blocks” of this type are linked, they can follow the same rules and follow each other harmoniously.

Title and article

No break between title and article!

Picture and caption

The other example that comes to mind is an image with a caption. The caption must remain under the image and, in no case, be rejected at the top of the page or the next column.

In these two cases, the “keepWithNext” attribute, which is a paragraph attribute, should be assigned to the titles and the paragraphs containing the images.

What about style sheets?

As it is a paragraph attribute, a paragraph style sheet will, of course, be able to benefit from it too. This is even how it is recommended to use this attribute: Associating it directly to the style sheets!
All titles will be automatically linked to the paragraphs that follow them, and pictures will not lose their captions! What a time saver and easy to edit!

INTERFACE

Finally, both widgets (Toolbar and Sidebar) have been updated to set this new attribute to paragraph(s). Your end users will love it!

Sidebar

Toolbar

Need more adjustments? Don’t forget, the source code is available on GitHub. Feel free to adapt it to suit your needs!