Why is it so hard to prevent a page break?

Question

Why won't LaTeX just let me keep things together on one page whenever I want to? Why isn't this straightforward to do? There is this:

Absolutely, definitely, preventing page break.

Maybe that works, always or sometimes, but if so, it's a mess. It is a bad answer, or rather is a good answer to manipulate a seemingly bad or broken system.

I know about \minipage, but like other questioners, I don't want a minipage. I just want a normal page in which normal elements stay together on the same page when I ask them to.

This question has been asked over and over and over again, in one way or another, so I think that I can accept that no really good answer to it exists. By why does no good answer exist?

Is it because there just something fundamentally, internally wrong with TeX?

If so, what is wrong, please?

I do not understand why it should be hard to tell LaTeX to keep certain elements together on the same page. I do not understand why it should be so hard to prevent a page break. Do you?

To me, it looks as though this should be trivial for LaTeX to do.

USE CASE

[Update: Commenters have shown that the below is not a very good illustration of the problem, or of what I perceive to be the problem. Unfortunately, though I have encountered the above problem repeatedly over the years, I do not have a better case at hand at the moment.]

My question is general, because it comes up often in various contexts. However, if you would like to hear about my latest use case as an example: I have a group of six tables which together nearly fill a nice, two-column page. I don't care exactly on which page the tables appear, but the six look a lot better if they are all on the same page. I don't want to do any weird tricks. I just want the six tables—normal, ordinary tables—to stay together.

Why is this so hard?

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments, if a group of 6 tables are intended to float together then they should be in a single float.

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}

\def\a{\addtocounter{enumi}{7}\roman{enumi}: One two three four five six seven }
\def\b{\a\a\par\a\a\a\a\par\a\a\a\a\a\a}
\def\c{\b\b Red yellow green blue \a\a\b}
\def\t{\begin{minipage}{.4\textwidth}\centering
\begin{tabular}{cc}
1&2\\3&4\\55&66\\777&888\\9999&aaaaa\\A&B\\X&Y
\end{tabular}\caption{zzzzzz \a\a}
\end{minipage}}

\begin{document}

\c\c

\begin{table*}
\t\hfill \t

\bigskip

\t\hfill \t

\bigskip


\t\hfill \t
\end{table*}

\c\c
\end{document}

Answer 2

Use case answer: Assuming that the six tables could really fit in one page of two columns, you can keep things together even if they really are not in the source code. You only need (a) six more or less nearby table floats and (b) use the [p] option to have one page of floats. Example with 4+2 tables in page 1 that are printed together in page 2:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\def\Warning#1{\vbox to 3\baselineskip {\vfil\bfseries\huge\sffamily\dotfill\fbox{#1}\vfil}}
\def\TABLE{\begin{table}[p]\centering
\begin{tabular}{|llll|}
\hline
    11 & 12 & 13 & 14\\
    21 & 22 & 23 & 24\\
    31 & 32 & 33 & 34\\
    41 & 42 & 43 & 44\\
    11 & 12 & 13 & 14\\
    21 & 22 & 23 & 24\\
    31 & 32 & 33 & 34\\
    41 & 42 & 43 & 44\\
    11 & 12 & 13 & 14\\
    21 & 22 & 23 & 24\\
    31 & 32 & 33 & 34\\
    41 & 42 & 43 & 44\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{A Table}
\end{table}}
\begin{document}
\lipsum[1-4]
\Warning{Tables are here ...} \TABLE\TABLE\TABLE\TABLE
\lipsum[5]
\Warning{... and here.} \TABLE\TABLE
\lipsum[6-10]
\end{document}