On Thu, 3 Apr 2025, Joel via ntg-context wrote:

\starttext     \input knuth     \input knuth     \input knuth          {\boldface This is instructions.}          \bTABLE[split=yes, frame=off]         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD \input knuth \input knuth \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR         \bTR\bTD ... \eTD\bTD ... \eTD\eTR     \eTABLE \stoptext

here is a minimum working example. If it sees that one sell is rather big, like in the case the first one is, it decides to put it on the next page, instead of just splitting that cell up.

I believe that in natural tables the table cell cannot split over a page. If there is not enough space to place the first row in the current page, then the table moves to the next page. Aditya