Re: [docbook-apps] Menuchoices in lists, using FOP

[Vincent Hennebert <vincent.hennebert@anyware-tech.com>]

Hi Chris,

Chris Ridd wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm using Docbook and the related XSL stylesheets pretty successfully
> except for one odd problem.
> 
> I have a number of procedures containing steps, and if a para inside a
> step contains a menuchoice, and my stylesheet sets:
> 
> <xsl:param name="menuchoice.menu.separator">
>   <fo:inline font-family="Symbol"> &#x2192; </fo:inline>
> </xsl:param>
> 
> then the step's sequence number is drawn vertically offset from the
> first line of the text. I uploaded a screenshot of this to a bug report:
> 
> <http://sourceforge.net/tracker/download.php?group_id=21935&atid=373747&file_id=250147&aid=1815080>
> 
> 
> This occurs if I use either xep 4 or fop 0.94. I'm running on Solaris.
> 
> The reason I'm explicitly setting the Symbol font is to workaround a
> known problem in fop. That workaround's also done in fo/inline.xsl in
> docbook-xsl 1.73.2, but only if fop1.extensions is non-zero.
> 
> Why is the line height getting mangled?

This is very probably because the Symbol font doesn’t have the same 
ascender value (the nominal height of letters, used to determine the 
appropriate line spacing) as the Times font you’re using for the rest of 
the text. This will happen wherever you mix Times and Symbol characters.


> Is there a better way of getting an arrow character as a separator here,
> if I'm using fop?

There is probably an FO setting to change the way lines are stacked, but 
the easiest is probably to use a font that has glyphs for both the 
normal characters and the arrow you want to use as a menu separator. 
There are plenty of them, both commercial and free. The FreeSerif [1] is 
one of them and looks like Times.

To configure a custom font with FOP, have a look at the FOP website [2] 
or ask on the fop-users mailing list if you have problems.

[1] http://www.nongnu.org/freefont/
[2] http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/0.94/fonts.html

HTH,
Vincent