Re: [docbook-apps] table vertical spans and page breaks

[Vincent Hennebert <vhennebert@gmail.com>]

Hi Bob,

Bob Stayton wrote:
> Hi,
> This is very interesting.  I did not know that keep-together is not a 
> property that acts on fo:table-cell, but that is indeed what the spec 
> says. My experience has been that in both XEP and Antenna House, putting 
> that property on fo:table-cell will keep the cell together regardless of 
> its spans or content (or lack thereof).

I guess a similar extension could be implemented in FOP. If anyone wants
to file a RFE:
https://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fop
;-)


> The spec does say that the keep-together property is inherited, so the 
> fo:block that DocBook XSL wraps the cell content in will inherit the 
> keep-together. So regardless of how many rows that cell spans, its 
> actual content in the fo:block will be kept together. As you say, if 
> that block doesn't fill the cell, there is nothing in the spec that 
> prevents the cell itself from  being broken below the block.
> 
> Do you know if the following solution works in FOP 0.95?

Yes it does. Keeps and breaks should now be fully supported on every
table element to which they apply (except the general limitation that
only the "always" value is supported for keeps).


>> The only solution, to my knowledge, to properly handle this is to set
>> keep-together on every row spanned by the cell, plus keep-with-next on
>> every row but the last one.
> 
> This might be feasible in the DocBook XSL stylesheet because of the way 
> it keeps track of vertical spans when processing rows.

That would be great!


Thanks,
Vincent