Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Getting started on Linux?

[Bob McIlvride <robert@cogent.ca>]

Holger Rauch wrote:

> I came accross your message on the DocBook apps mailing list concerning
> your in-hose guide. Well, first of all, thanks a lot for providing such a
> useful piece of documentation.

You're welcome.  Always happy to help

> After having looked at the "Tools" section, I found out that you guys at
> Cogent use JadeTeX to produce PDF. I've noticed that either the
> tex-backend of Jade/OpenJade, or JadeTeX doesn't seem to to able to handle
> <colspec>s and <spanspec>s at all. (These, however, are required when it
> comes to slightly more complex tables.)

> What's your experience at Cogent with regard to complex tables in
> DocBook? Did you face similar problems? If so, how did you manage to solve
> them?

We do use <colspec>s in some documents, and I think we tried <spanspec>
once, with the poor results you are getting.  There are also problems
with the first line indent and with attempting to render different fonts
in one cell. We try to keep things as simple as possible, and in our
experience (verified by others on this list) tables generally give
unpredictable output in PDF through the JadeTeX route if you try to do
more than the basics.  Unfortunately, as I understand it, it is quite
difficult to change this, and it may never get changed.
 
> Thanks in advance for any info on this issue and for providing such a
> valuable introductory document on DocBook!

I only wish I could help you (and ourselves) more on tables in PDF.


Cheerio!

Bob

----------------
Robert McIlvride (robert@cogent.ca), Cogent Real-Time Systems
(www.cogent.ca)