Suggestion: border styles on style:columns and style:column elements

[Sander Marechal <sander.marechal@tribal-im.com>]

Hello,

I would like to propose a suggestion for ODF 1.2 (or a later version): 
Allow the use of fo:border-* (and perhaps fo:margin-* and fo:padding-* 
as well) on the style:columns and style:column elements.

Rationale: A simple document layout such as the below example is 
currently not possible. It can be achieved only partially with 
work-arounds that (ab)use a big 1x1 table or frames to contain the page 
text. Warning: ugly ASCII art follows:

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
h  page header  h
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

ppppppppppppppppp
p               p
p   page text   p
p               p
ppppppppppppppppp

fffffffffffffffff
f  page footer  f
fffffffffffffffff

h = header border
p = page text area border (the columns element)
f = footer border

Currently, borders can only be specified for the header, the footer and 
the page itself, but the page border goes around the header and footer. 
I think it is useful to be able to use borders around the columns and 
column element to make documents such as above possible. Here's another 
use case in ASCII art:

ccccccc ccccccc
c     c c     c
c  c  c c  c  c
c  o  c c  o  c
c  l  c c  l  c
c  u  c c  u  c
c  m  c c  m  c
c  n  c c  n  c
c     c c     c
ccccccc ccccccc

c = individual column border

Taken together with the already existing borders for page, header, 
footer and the column separator, the following would be possible (last 
of the ugly ASCII art):

ppppppppppppppppppppppppp
p                       p
p hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh p
p h    page header    h p
p hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh p
p                       p
p CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC p
p C                   C p
p C ccccccc s ccccccc C p
p C c     c s c     c C p
p C c  c  c s c  c  c C p
p C c  o  c s c  o  c C p
p C c  l  c s c  l  c C p
p C c  u  c s c  u  c C p
p C c  m  c s c  m  c C p
p C c  n  c s c  n  c C p
p C c     c s c     c C p
p C ccccccc s ccccccc C p
p C                   C p
p CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC p
p                       p
p fffffffffffffffffffff p
p f    page footer    f p
p fffffffffffffffffffff p
p                       p
ppppppppppppppppppppppppp

p = page border
h = header border
C = columns border
c = individual column border
s = column separator
f = footer border

I am unsure what the right way is to submit this suggestion to you. Is 
this posting all you need? Do I need to work something out, type it up 
and submit it somewhere? Writing English suitable for use in a standards 
document isn't my forte I'm afraid, but I'm willing to take a stab at it 
if someone can help me.

Kind regards,

-- 
Sander Marechal