Re: PreTeXt page break control in handouts

[Oscar Levin]

Hi Jakayla,

Good questions.  I'm replying and cc-ing the google-support group since I think others will have your same questions.

Currently support for any "printouts" means putting that printout in either a <worksheet> or a <handout> division.  These can live inside a chapter or section or subsection, but they cannot be further divided by anything other than <paragraphs>.

So for guided notes, I would use a structure like the following:

<handout>

  <title>Notes for January 12, 2026</title>

  <page>

    <p workspace="1in">

      Today we will learn how to factor polynomials, such as the following.

    </p>

   ....

  </page>

  <page>

  ...

  </page>

</handout>

Note that if you just omit the <page> elements, the javascript will try to partition your content in a way that distributes any extra workspace between pages equitably.  However, if you use the <page> elements, then if you put more content (and workspace) than will fit on a page, it will just overflow.

Hope this helps.  Feel free to reply-all to this email or reply on pretext-support if you have more questions.

Cheers,

Oscar.

On Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 9:36 AM Jakayla Robbins <jak...@gmail.com> wrote:

Good morning,

In a Google groups posts about PreTeXt for Tests, I saw that you have been using handouts for daily lecture notes.  I would like to do the same and have spent a fair amount of time over this break installing PreTeXt and trying to convert one of my guided notes templates into a PreTeXt handout.  If I understand you correctly, there is some page-break control in handouts.  I have seen this claim in various places, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to do this.  I have tried <page> </page>.  I tried to look at the css to see if I could allow page breaks inside of subsections.  I'm stuck.  My problem is that my content runs off the page.  If you look at Handouts section in the annotated sample article (https://pretextbook.org/examples/sample-article/annotated/section-handouts.html), and click on the printer icon in Firefox or Chrome, you can see that the content runs off the page.  This is the problem I am having.  

I am new to the Google group format, so I was not sure if it was appropriate to reply to your post because it was about handouts, not headers and footers for exams.  I would appreciate any help you could give both in regard to page breaks and about how to best communicate when I do have questions.

Sincerely,

Jakayla Robbins