When listing APL functions, most people are anxious to avoid getting the odd lonely line at the top or bottom of a page. On the other hand, simply setting a paragraph as ‘keep together’ can result in huge amounts of white space if you are dealing with long functions.

In NewLeaf this is handled by two paragraph properties:

MinAfter – space in points
Keep – number of lines

These work together to keep subheadings attached to the paragraph they refer to, and to prevent blocks of text from being split in unfortunate places.

Typically, a function listing would be run using a paragraph style with Keep set to a number between 6 and 10. This would result in a function of (say) 12 lines skipping to a new frame if it found itself about to be placed within 6 lines of the end of the frame. If each listing was accompanied by a subheading, this could be set to MinAfter sufficient for 8 lines of listing, or around 96 points assuming our listings are running at 12-point line spacing.

Note that for normal text, the default value of MinAfter is 0, but that Keep is initially set to 2 to prevent ‘widows’ at the bottom of pages.