Why cannot a table cell span two pages?

I have no idea why Apple chose to prevent table cells from spanning two pages, but that's the way things are in Pages 3.0 and earlier.

This may not be a big problem if you are translating Petrarca's sonnets, and want the left column to contain the original text and the right one the translation. Each sonnet is so short that you probably can adjust the text so no split is needed between pages.



However, if you try the same trick with Beowulf, you will inevitably end up having to split chapters over page breaks. Not only is the end of the text simply cut off - there is an ugly trace of letters cut in half.



One solution is to use text boxes. Have one set of text boxes on the left for the original and link them over the page breaks. Have a parallel set of text boxes on the right for the translation, and split them in the same way.