Craeg Strong wrote:
Hello:
Here is some more feedback from a long time FOP user.
I am ABSOLUTELY THRILLED by the new release.
I have used it to create a number of PDF documents from Docbook/XML
sources
and the results are excellent! Thanks a million for this.
While I don't agree that lack of automated table layout is a deal
breaker,
I do agree that it is probably the *most* *important* feature yet to
be implemented,
especially for new users.
Since the auto table layout handling is based on the rules for CSS
(and says so in the spec),
it seems a shame there isn't a reusable library somewhere for this.
Since lack of auto-table layout is a FAQ, (or FEC frequently
expressed complaint?)
it might be a good idea to post some XSLT workarounds. For example,
you might
simply divide the available space by the number of columns, or you
might somehow
grab the longest string, multiply times the m-width, and use that, or...
I currently divide the available space by the number of columns.
Does FOP 0.90 do good text wrapping in table cells? I think that there
may have been issues with this in 0.20.5 as well that combined to make
this problematic. Either that or it was just the fact that when you
have 6 or 7 columns and one contains long textual strings (e.g. part
numbers) without spaces, you quickly run into layout issues without an
automatic table layout engine.
Obviously it gets very complicated, which is why it isn't implemented
yet :-) but I suspect
several people like myself have written various workarounds in XSLT
which could be
posted on a wiki page or in a FAQ somewhere. Just a thought...
I haven't had the time or energy to do anything more elaborate than
generate equal table column widths.
--
Jess Holle
