DOCBOOK: Re: newbie table colspec colwidth question

[Douglas du Boulay <ddb@R3401.rlem.titech.ac.jp>]

> / Douglas du Boulay <ddb@R3401.rlem.titech.ac.jp> was heard to say:
> | I have a docbook sgml document containing many informaltables.
> | I am using the linux documentation project ldp.dsl customization
> | of the modular docbook.dsl dsssl stylsheets for rendering to HTML.
> |
> | Using all default sgml attributes, all the resultant HTML tables have 
> | explicitly equal width columns. In an earlier version of my document
> 
> The stock stylesheets don't seem to do this. Can you try your test
> document without the ldp.dsl customization and see if the problem
> still exists?

The problem still exists. 
I did this (debian woody GNU Linux)
jade:I: Jade version "1.2.1"
jade:I: SP version "1.3.4"

jade -t sgml -i html -d /usr/share/sgml/docbook/stylesheet/dsssl/modular/html/docbook.dsl /home/jack/ddb/ld2db/xtal/xtal3.7.2.sgml

and /usr/share/sgml/docbook/stylesheet/dsssl/modular/VERSION  =1.74b

Ahh. I see how it happened.
Oops. I lied above. Not ALL default SGML attributes - just default widths
I think maybe the ldp2db convertor I used was a little bit overzealous
Every table has a ColSpec line for each column. As in ...

<TGroup Cols="2">
<ColSpec Align="Left" Colsep="0">
<ColSpec Align="Left" Colsep="0">
<TBody>
<Row>
<Entry> ...

Maybe that is sufficient to trigger the "set all colwidths equal" option 
even though the specific colwidth=... attribute is absent. 
When I comment out the <ColSpec> tags the 
resultant HTML columns do adjust their widths beautifully as I wanted.



> 
> | Probably it is most desirable to specify the colwith explicitly with
> | the <colspec> tag but I wonder what is the recomended way to set those
> | widths for both html and print output.
> 
> By using CALS relative width specifications. 

OK. I wondered if maybe folks might generally be using some kind of 
html/print conditional entity statement somehow. Thought I would try and 
do it properly from the start rather than retro.

Thanks again Norm!

Doug