Re: [docbook-apps] complex tables

["Christian Roth" <roth@infinity-loop.de>]

>how do I express in docbook (and/or HTML!) a table with misaligned cells?
>e.g.
>
>---------------------------------------------------
>|    a  |     b    |       c       |      d       |
>|-------------------------------------------------|
>|      e     |      f        |     g   |     g    |
>|-------------------------------------------------|
>|                       |                         |
>|                       |           j             |
>|         i             |                         |
>|                       |-------------------------|
>|                       |                         |
>|-----------------------|            l            |
>|          k            |                         |
>---------------------------------------------------

The way we handle this when converting RTF documents to (X)HTML or CALS
(DocBook) is as follows:

1. We build an ordered list with all vertical cell borders' absolute
positions.
2. We use column spanning to re-create the original layout on the now
fine-grained table grid.

In your case, the First and second rows would look like:

>---------------------------------------------------
>|    a  | b  : b'  |   c     : c'  |d :   d'      |
>|-------------------------------------------------|
>|    e  : e' |  f  :  f'     | g   :g' |     g    |
>|-------------------------------------------------|

with {b, b'} etc. being colspanned. The complete table is then a regular
grid with columns at these positions:

>|-------------------------------------------------|
>|       |    |     |         |     |   |          |
>|-------------------------------------------------|

We have done this in real Java code - don't know if this can be done
(easily) in pure XSLT.

Best regards
Christian Roth

--
Christian Roth (CTO)
Phone: +49 89 890432-95
Web  : http://www.infinity-loop.de
infinity-loop GmbH * Neideckstr. 25 * 81249 München * Germany