Table breaks - Request for better control capability

This is a combined question and request:

Are there ways DITA and/or the OT could be improved to improve table/page breaks in PDF output or provide options for this? It seems the usual answer is to modify your XSL-FO settings, but I think most DITA users don't know how to do this. So I wonder if there's a way to fix "bad" table/page breaks in all cases (or easy options to control break behavior).

Examples of bad page breaks:

If a break occurs where table cells have been merged (or straddled), the result can look pretty bad.

Sometimes a cell that spans the width of the table is used as a header to divide main parts of the table--if that header ends up by itself at the bottom of a page it looks bad.

"Orphan rows" where you have just one or two rows by themselves on a page look bad.

Comment: It seems that "hard-coded" breaks in a table would not be a good solution, because the break might look fine in Book A, but in Book B, with a different flow, the forced break might not look right.

There's a lot I don't understand about this problem, but I know that page breaks within tables are the biggest visual/layout problem in my DITA documents. Is there a way to address this other than just saying "fix it in your stylesheets"?

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