Re: [docbook-apps] xsl-sheet breaks fo with xref in preface

[Bob Stayton <bobs@sco.com>]

On Fri, Oct 24, 2003 at 12:26:27AM +0200, Jens Skripczynski wrote:
> hi,
> 
> got a small problem with an xref inside the preface. 
> 
> When I run the attached xml file my fo processor print this line
> ad finitum:
> ------------
>      [java] [INFO] area contents overflows area
> ------------
> 
> Only removing the <xref /> section resolves this error/bug/... .
  
The problem is with the variablelist formatting of
this line:

     <varlistentry><term><xref linkend="ch-intro"/></term>

For FO output, the variablelist items are formatted using
fo:list-block, and it must have a numerical specification
for the indent which is the space on the left for
the terms in the list.  The stylesheet has to compute
that numerical width since FOP won't adjust to fit the
content.

The stylesheet tries to compute that width from the
content of the <term> elements.  But all it does
is count the length of the text in the term.  In
this case, <xref> is empty, so there is no text, so
minimal space is allocated.  Unfortunately, FOP
does not gracefully recover from this problem (despite
the bug report and reminder to the FOP project).

In cases where the calculation is wrong, you can
specify the width using a 'termlength' attribute on
the variablelist:

<variablelist termlength="10em">

You need to estimate the maximum width of the resolved terms.

Or you could format the list as "blocks" rather than as
a list, which eliminates the problem since there is no
fo:list-block.  To do that, you can put this processing
instruction in the variablelist:

<variablelist>
<?dbfo list-presentation="blocks"?>
...


Bob Stayton                                 400 Encinal Street
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