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Subject: Re: DOCBOOK-APPS: howto make nicer tables?
On Friday 17 January 2003 07:21, A.R. (Tom) Peters wrote: > I am processing DocBook/XML with jade and jadtex and hence to pdf and ps. Switch to openjade. I recently experienced wierd problems with tablefootnotes while using Jade, but they disappeared after switching to openjade (I believe the two were correlated, but I was also experimenting with customizing the dsssl so not 100% sure). > I am using the standard DSSSL stylesheets by Norman Walsh. > Now tables when printed have the following flaws: > a) all columns are equally wide and not adjusted to width of content. You need to use a <colspec colwidth="x*" /> tag for each column. I think it is recommended to use relative width specifiers (the *) if you are transforming to print as well as html, but if you are only transforming to print maybe a specific dimension like colwidth="30mm" might be fine. You might also experience the problem of long text strings not being wrapped to fit the cell dimensions. I believe this can be cured by customizing the stylesheets to add the dsssl attribute lines: 'wrap to table cells. On the other hand maybe switching to openjade fixed this too (not sure at the moment). > b) text starts immediately next to the table border (when left-adjusted), > without any spacing. under debian linux there is a file : /usr/share/sgml/docbook/stylesheet/dsssl/modular/print/dbtable.dsl It contained the following parameters (along with several others) (define %cals-cell-content-start-indent% 2pt) (define %cals-cell-content-end-indent% 2pt) You should be able to redefine those in your customization layer. > I do specify the align="justify" label in the tgroup tag, but it makes no > difference. > How can I improve the appearence on these two points? > Thanx, What suprises me is that there is no docbook attribute for explicitly setting the desired width of the table. There is only the pgwide attribute. I would have liked to be able to say tablewidth="50%" of the page, just like in html. pgwide basically switches from 100% to an invariably bad automatic calculation. You can work around this by using tabstyle attributes and hacking the dsssl code, but if you have many unique tables it could be quite painful. I get the feeling that the dsssl route is a technological dead end and you would probably be better off switching to xsl rather than learning to hack dsssl, especially as you are already using docbook/XML. I think passivetex is also being more actively developed than jadetex, if I understand correctly. cheers Doug
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