I would recommend its removal, but am OK with it if you wish to keep it in.
The warning message says: "Ignoring span attribute on <whatever> as it's
not a direct child of an fo:flow"
But it doesn't need to be a direct child of an *fo:flow* in
particular--just a flow (fo:flow or fo:static-content). The spec says
7.20.4: "This only has effect on areas returned by a flow; e.g.
block-areas generated by fo:block children of an fo:flow." I think the
purpose of this 7.20.4 sentence to prohibit using the "span" attribute
for areas not returned by flows: such as bookmarks, page sequence
titles, and the like.
Another issue is that the fo:blocks enclosing an fo:external-graphic may
have been generated by XSLT, and may end up having a "span" value of
"all" by default on all of them as a result (so that the graphic may
look the same whether being sent to either a multi-column
fo:region-body, a single-column fo:region-body, or a one-column
side-region.) Here, the user would fully expects "span" to be ignored
anyway for side regions.
Glen
Jeremias Maerki wrote:
I've seen such a warning in another FO implementation and thought this
woud be a nice service for our users. I didn't give the implications
much thought. Should I remove the check?
On 26.06.2005 16:13:39 Glen Mazza wrote:
BTW, Jeremias--the recent warning you added to the
code on ignoring an span attribute on an fo:static-content descendant.
Keep in mind, it may end up *not* being ignored for three reasons: (1)
layout may someday allow fo:static-content to be redirected to the
fo:region-body (where span values become relevant), although FOP
currently raises an error when that occurs; (2) There are some XSL
functions which allow you to reference the property value on that FO;
and (3) the span attribute could be inherited by
fo:instream-foreign-object that an fo:block encloses. Personally, I
think this warning is not really needed (it is a given from the spec
that multiple columns aren't supported in side regions), or would better
be placed in layout (query the span attribute from SCLM and complain if
not "1" or "all".)
Jeremias Maerki
