continued label for long tables

[Paul Tremblay <paulhtremblay@gmail.com>]

I have a question about the XSL stylesheets in docbook. For a long table, it is desirable to have the title repeated on every page, with the word "continued" after the first occurrence. Most FO processors don't implement the latest standards of FO, so we need some work around. I have used two in the past:

1. Include the label in a running header or footer.

2. Break the table into two table. Process the first table as normal. For the second table, create a header with title and the continued label.

(1)  requires that you create your own page sequences and call on them. Doing so is not difficult. The difficult part comes in calling the page sequences in the right order. For example, if you have a long table in the middle of a chapter, you would have to call the page sequence template, apply all the templates for the text before the long table, call the long table sequence, then call on the original sequence for the rest of the content. While this solution is possible, it does not lend itself to reuse, because you would have to do a lot of re-writing each time.

(2) requires that you know how much of your table fits on one page before you write the rest of it. Though you cannot know the exact inches your text will take, you can make an educated guess and readjust the table after a few trial runs. Though (2) is far from perfect, at seems to provide less re-writing than (1) and lends itself for reuse. 

Any thoughts or hints before I launch into implementing (2)?

Paul