Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: Getting started on Linux?

[Michael Smith <smith@xml-doc.org>]

Bob McIlvride <robert@cogent.ca> writes:

> Holger Rauch wrote:
> 
> > [...] 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.)

As a footnote to this discussion: <spanspec> isn't required, at least
not for horizontal spans. You can instead specify horizontal spans
using the nameend="" and namest="" attributes on <entry> elements.

And the OASIS Exchange table model -- which I think will be the
default in DocBook 5.0 -- doesn't allow <spanspec> at all, but
requires you to specify horizontal spans on <entry>'s.

Whether or not existing processing apps deal any better with spans
specified on <entry>'s instead of <spanspec>'s is another question.