Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: FOP rendering of variablelist

[Bob Stayton <bobs@caldera.com>]

On Sun, Nov 24, 2002 at 10:18:26PM -0800, Matthew Scholtz wrote:
> At 01:59 PM 11/22/02 -0800, you wrote:
> >> 
> >> And it actually has done a decent job so far of rendering
> >> my stuff.  It's not beautiful, but it's readable.  The
> >> biggest glitch so far is in how it renders <variablelist>
> >> elements.  It makes two columns, and the right column (with
> >> the definitions) looks fine (left margins lined up, etc.)
> >> However, when the left colum (the terms) is longer than 20
> >> characters or so, the term ends up running over the 2nd
> >> column, juxtaposed on top of the definition.  Basically, it
> >> fails to wrap the term when it's too wide to
> >> 
> >> I know nothing about FO syntax, so wondering if anyone
> >> has dealt with this before, or could suggest a stylesheet
> >> change to make FOP happier.
> >
> >You can give FOP some help in setting
> >indents if it can't get it right.  You can
> >do that with an attribute or processing instruction
> >on individual lists.  See the following
> >for some guidance on how to do that in DocBook XSL:
> >
> >http://www.sagehill.net/xml/docbookxsl/PrintOutput.html#ListIndents
> 
> OK, I followed the suggestions here, and (sticking for now with the side-by-side columns layout) changed the column width for the terms as you suggest.  This succeeded - I got the column to change width.  However, at no time could I get the term to wrap.  Making the term column smaller only shifted the right column further to the left, resulting in more overlap than before.
> 
> This may be a question only because of my extreme ignorance of XSL:FO, but:
> How do I get the term to wrap?
> Can I do this with a processing instruction or a style sheet parameter, or would I have to customize the style sheets themselves?

I think this is a bug in FOP.  The label should be wrapping
inside its list-item-label block.  There is no parameter
or PI to tell it to do what it should already be doing.
That's why I suggested setting the variablelist.as.blocks parameter
when nothing else works.

-- 

Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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