Limit content to one page, by throwing away extra content

Question

I have a series of pages with a couple of paragraphs each. Rather than leave the rest of the page blank, I have a whole bunch of “trivia” factoids. I'd like to put as many of those on the page as there is room for.

Imagine having a book with one page per day of the year. The main content would be a couple of paragraphs describing the day, but the page could be filled with “interesting things that happened this day in history”.

I can import way more than I'd ever need, so no packing or resizing or trying to get them all on. But definitely no extra pages with the rest of the “trivia” on them. And I definitely don't want to spend the time hand-typesetting every page by choosing exactly the right number of trivia entries, adjusting them after each edit, etc.

My only other slight requirement is that the whole factoid is there: I can't end the page with a half a fact. But I am assuming the samepage environment will do this.

I have no idea how to throw away data though.

Answer 1

There was an article in TUGboat which discussed this and provided some code https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb32-3/tb102glister.pdf (section 2. Cut off in its prime). There is far more in the article than can be put here, so please read it.

Answer 2

The idea is to create a separate file containing factoids, then read them (in order) until the page is full.

This creates a file of factoids. I put the fixed padding here so that you can change it per factoid then measure the needed space.

\documentclass[multi={minipage}]{standalone}
\textwidth=345.0pt% obtained using \the\textwidth
\begin{document} 

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\null\bigskip
My dog has no nose.\\
\textit{How does he smell?}\\
Awful!
\end{minipage}

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\null\bigskip
\textbf{abend} (from the German \textit{Guten Abend}) 
A system abort induced deliberately (usually on Fridays) to allow
third shift staffers to leave early.
\end{minipage}

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\null\bigskip
\textbf{ACRONYM} Alphabetic Collocation Reducing Or Numbing Your Memory.
Often confused with its antonym \textit{mnemonic}.
\end{minipage}

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\null\bigskip
\textbf{CAD} Computer Aided Delay.
\end{minipage}

\begin{minipage}{\textwidth}
\null\bigskip
\textbf{ISAM} Intrinsically Slow Access method.
\end{minipage}

\end{document}

This adds the factoids using \fillpage. Interestingly, I crash if I attempt to read the last page.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{lipsum}% MWE only

\newcounter{factoid}
\newif\ifmorefactoids
\newcommand{\maxfactoid}{4}% should be 5

\newcommand{\fillpage}{\bgroup% use local registers
  \morefactoidstrue
  \loop
  \stepcounter{factoid}%
  \ifnum\value{factoid}>\maxfactoid\relax
    \setcounter{factoid}{1}%
  \fi
  \sbox0{\includegraphics[page=\thefactoid]{test4}}% file contining factoids
  \par
  \setlength{\dimen0}{\dimexpr \ht0+\dp0}%
  \setlength{\dimen1}{\dimexpr \pagegoal-\pagetotal}%
  \ifdim \dimen1>\dimen0
    \box0
  \else
    \morefactoidsfalse
    \newpage
    \addtocounter{factoid}{-1}%
  \fi
  \ifmorefactoids\repeat
\egroup}
  
\begin{document}

\lipsum[1-4]
\fillpage

\lipsum[4-5]
\fillpage

\end{document}