Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Unexpected HTML output using customization of HTMLDocBook styles heet

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.COM>]

> From: Beth Fischi <bfischi@broadjump.com>
> 
> Could someone help me spot what I'm doing wrong? I'm using the following
> stylesheet, which imports the html\docbook.xsl stylesheet for DocBook, but
> the resulting HTML file displays with Futura Book but no other formatting.
> Did I somehow override the html\docbook.xsl formatting by including this
> template where & how I did?
> 
> When I just use the html\docbook.xsl stylesheet, the resulting HTML file
> looks okay (i.e., has a basic table structure with Times font face), except
> for the tricky cells split into double rows ("morerows"), which don't
> display properly -- they get shifted over into third and fourth columns. Any
> help would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> **********XSL FILE*********************
> <?xml version="1.0"?>
> <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
>                 version='1.0'
>                 xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/strict"
> 		exclude-result-prefixes="#default">
> 
> <xsl:import href="docbook.xsl"/>
> 
> <!-- Apply Futura face formatting to entry text. -->
> <xsl:template match="entry">
> 	<FONT FACE="Futura Book" SIZE="-1">
> 	<xsl:apply-templates/>
> 	</FONT>
> </xsl:template>
> 
> </xsl:stylesheet>

The basic problem is that you have superceded a more
complex template with your simple template.  The Docbook
XSL file "html/table.xsl" defines templates for <entry>
using:

<xsl:template match="thead/row/entry">

and these go on to handle the various attributes,
output the HTML <TD> tags, and perform
various other table cell processing.
The precedent rules for templates say that a more
specific template has greater precedence than
a more general template.  Since your template
is an exact match for <entry>, it wins.
Your new template for "entry" doesn't add to
the former processing of <entry>, it replaces it.
So you get no <TD> markup and only Futura.

Offhand, I don't see an easy way to add your
customization to the Docbook XSL table processing
(someone else might, though).  I would instead
go for a CSS stylesheet for the HTML <TD>
element rather than the <FONT> tag.

bobs