Re: [docbook-apps] 2 column sidebar with Antenna House

[Daniel Reed <danreed121@gmail.com>]

I want to clarify my findings...

For the RenderX extension to work (rx:flow-section), it must be a child of the fo:flow.

When
 I got the example from support at AH, they had their 
"fo:block-container" as a child as well, and it worked.  So I ASSumed it
 had to also be a child.

I decided that I would mess with it some
 more and found that it doesn't have to be a child in AH.  What was 
causing an issue was DocBook... the formal.object.properties attr set 
assigned a keep-together.within.column=always up higher in the chain, 
and that was interfering with the local two column.

So, once I set the local keep-together.within.column property to "auto".

So, AH is far more flexible that RenderX in this respect, though I am 
unsure if the interference from the keep-together.within.column isn't 
really a bug in the way they implemented their extension... I would have
 re-read the parts of teh FO spec to figure that out.

So, to change the column layout mid flow:

RenderX - use the <rx:flow-section> extension element, but it must be a CHILD of the fo:flow
Antenna House - add the axf:column-count attr to fo:block-container (regardless of where it is) but note that a keep-together.within.column like is added by the DocBook attr set "formal.object.properties" to just about everything will skew this and cause it to run in one column only.  To fix this, override the attr to "auto" for your fo:block-container.

Hope this helps someone someday!

2011/11/16 Daniel Reed <danreed121@gmail.com>

Thanks for the help.

Turns out, AH documentation is a bit incomplete.  The <fo:block-container> must be a child element of the fo:flow in order for this to work.

That isn't really stated from what I have read, though knowing how it works in RenderX, I should have known.

Thanks for the tip though.

cheers

On Wed, Nov 16, 2011 at 3:30 AM, Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz> wrote:

On 16.11.2011 1:10, Daniel Reed wrote:

> When the content is rendered, it does have 2 columns, but content is always
> in column #1, nothing ever flows to the second column.
>
> I tried setting the axf:column-fill="balance" (which, according to the doc,
> is the default anyway) and that didn't help.

Try to put <fo:block span="all"/> at the end of your two column content.
This does ballancing when you have two columns in region-body, it might
work there as well -- I don't have XSL Formatter at hand to test it.

                               Jirka

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