Re: [xsl] Table columns - fixed span width with underlying "auto" layout columns

[Brandon Ibach <brandon.ibach@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Feb 23, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Murray McDonald <m.mcdonald@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
> I still need to deal with the underline part of the problem.  The length of
> the underline that should be used throughout the column is determined by
the
> widest data entry (excluding any data that hangs) That's why I was thinking
> of "splitting" these columns into 3 columns, one  to  hold any content that
> needs to hang, one to hold (and right-align) the numeric data and also
> correctly "size" the underlines, and the leftmost column to pad the whole
> thing out to the calculated width.

Instead of the multiple columns, how about a variation on the hidden
inline trick?  This one is going to be a bit more complex and bloat
your FO code a bit, but with XSLT doing the heavy lifting, who cares,
eh? :)

Assuming you have negative percentages somewhere in the table (so you
need to leave space for both "%" and ")"), then for a value of -$123
(rendered as "($123)"), you'd have something like this:

<block line-height="1">
    <inline-container>
        <block>($123</block>
        <!-- block-containers -->
    </inline-container>
    <inline>)</inline><inline visibility="hidden">%</inline>
</block>

The inlines at the end are for the visible and invisible hanging
punctuation, respectively.  The line-height on the outer block is to
prevent the line getting extra tall due to the nested blocks.  The
inline-container sets up a reference area in which we can position
other blocks, which brings us to the block-containers, of which there
will be one for each data entry in the column (the entire column being
copied, in this form, in every row), like this:

<block-container absolute-position="absolute" bottom="0" right="0">
    <block>
        <inline border-bottom="solid 1pt black">
            <inline visibility="hidden">($123</inline>
        </inline>
    </block>
</block-container>

Each block-container is anchored in the lower-right corner of the
inline-container, so they all stack on top of each other.  The actual
text content is hidden, but provides the correct width for the inline
wrapper with a bottom border.  Because all of the values in the column
are in the "stack", the visible result is a line as long as the widest
entry.

-Brandon :)


> On 23/02/2011 7:45 PM, Brandon Ibach wrote:
>
> The most elegant solution I can think of would be to use the
> text-align="<string>" property to align the numeric values on a
> zero-width space between the final digit and any "%" or ")", but the
> documentation on XEP indicates that it doesn't support that feature.
>
> The next best choice would probably be the multi-column solution, only
> I think you should be able to do it with just two columns, as I don't
> see the need for the one to the left.  I'm not completely clear on how
> you're doing the layout, though.  Is your XSLT calculating fixed
> widths for each column, or are you relying on XEP to do auto-layout?
>
> I can think of one other option that might work, though it is a bit of
> a hack.  Pre-scan the content in your XSLT to determine if any entries
> will need a "%", a ")" or both.  Then, while generating each entry,
> add any of those symbols not needed by that entry in an<fo:inline
> visibility="hidden">  at the end.  Combined with text-align="right" on
> the block (and possibly a keep-together to make sure there's no
> wrapping), this should reserve the needed space to line everything up.
>
> -Brandon :)