Avoiding orphaned headings

[MichaelGrafnetter]

Hello, first of all, thanks for this great template! I would like to ask if it was possible to somehow "glue" headings to content, ideally in the template itself, so that there are no orphaned headings at page ends. Here is an example of a heading followed by a table, which I would expect to be rendered on the same page, without the need of manually adding a page break to the content:

[timonbldw]

Hi, as a quick fix, you can use the nowidow package. You can include it by adjusting the header through your markdown file like this: header-includes: \usepackage[defaultlines=2,all]{nowidow}. The defaultlines option sets the default minimal number of lines to be kept after or before the page break.

So your markdown file could look like this:

---
title: "Your title"
author: "Your name"
date: "2025-04-14"
header-includes: \usepackage[defaultlines=2,all]{nowidow}
---

# Title
Your text...

You may need to install nowidow first using tlmgr:

tlmgr update --self && tlmgr install nowidow

[MichaelGrafnetter]

@timonbldw Do you know if nowidow is included in the pandoc/extra official container?

[MichaelGrafnetter]

@timonbldw I tested nowidow and it had no effect on tables at all.

[MichaelGrafnetter]

I tested \allsectionsfont{\needspace{5\baselineskip}} as well, but it has unexpected side-effects.

[cagix]

shouldn't this be a non-iussue given the underlying machinery is latex? 🤔

edit: but yeah, i've been stumbling upon this as well several times

[timonbldw]

Sorry, I hadn't tried this with a table. Unfortunately I don't have a good quick fix for the issues in combination with tables.

You could try one more thing:

header-includes: \AddToHook{cmd/subsubsection/before}{\needspace{6\baselineskip}}

This would add the needspace command to all subsubsections, but as you said you already tried something similar, I don't have too much of high hopes here.

You can always add a \clearpage or \needspace in your markdown file before the specific headline to force it on a new page. This is only a last resort though, as this does not scale well when you need to update text before your section.

[MichaelGrafnetter]

Thanks, @timonbldw , I will try the AddToHook method.

You can always add a \clearpage or \needspace in your markdown file

I am generating both PDF and HTML output from the same source MD files, so embedded TEX is not an option for me. 😒

[MichaelGrafnetter]

Hi @timonbldw , I have tried the \AddToHook{cmd/subsubsection/before}{\needspace{6\baselineskip}} trick. In some cases, 6 is not enough:

Moreover, it randomly produces strange artifacts - empty tables:

I was not expecting this to be so complicated.