On Tue, 2004-05-25 at 16:08, Andreas L. Delmelle wrote: > > -----Original Message----- > > From: James Earl [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > Hi, > > <snip /> > > I'm just curious to know what people have found works best for them as > > an alternative to achieving somewhat auto table layout? I'm currently > > trying to figure out what I should do. I've just started learning XSL > > as a result of beginning to use FOP to try to automatically create a > > catalogue from data stored within a MySQL database. > > > > The only idea I've had so far, was to use the maximum column lengths as > > returned from PHP's mysql_fetch_field() to somehow formulate a > > proportional-column-width() value for the column-widths. > > > > As for the formula... I have no clue what that might be yet! :) > > > > Hmm. proportional-column-width() could indeed do the trick here. Too bad > XSLT doesn't have aggregate functions min() or max(), but this can be worked > around rather easily. > > Say your source XML looks like (--and you are actually using XML+XSLT to > generate FO...) > > <root> > <record> > <field index="1">Some piece of text</field> > <field index="2">A slightly longer portion of text</field> > </record> > <record> > <field index="1">Longer text in first field</field> > <field index="2">Shorter text in field two</field> > </record> > </root> > > Then, in XSLT, to construct a table offering the maximum field lengths > mapped to column-widths, you could do something like (pseudo-code --well, > almost... the code actually works): > > <xsl:template match="root"> > <fo:table table-layout="fixed" width="100%"> > <!-- use the first row as basis; we only need the first row > to determine the number of columns (see CSS spec) --> > <xsl:apply-templates select="record[1]/field" mode="col-create" /> > <fo:table-body> > <xsl:apply-templates select="record" mode="row-create" /> > </fo:table-body> > </fo:table> > </xsl:template> > > <xsl:template match="field" mode="col-create"> > <!-- create a variable to contain the maximum field-width ... --> > <xsl:variable name="vMax"> > <!-- iterate over all fields with the same @index ... --> > <xsl:for-each select="/*/record/[EMAIL PROTECTED]()/@index]"> > <!-- sort in descending order --> > <xsl:sort select="string-length()" order="descending" /> > <!-- the first one in sorted order is the one we need --> > <xsl:if test="position()=1"> > <xsl:value-of select="string-length()" /> > </xsl:if> > </xsl:for-each> > </xsl:variable> > <!-- ... and use this maximum for prop-col-width --> > <fo:table-column column-number="[EMAIL PROTECTED]" > column-width="{concat('proportional-column-width(', > $vMax,')')}" /> > </xsl:template> > > <xsl:template match="record" mode="row-create"> > <fo:table-row> > <xsl:for-each select="field"> > <fo:table-cell column-number="[EMAIL PROTECTED]"> > <fo:block> > <xsl:value-of select="." /> > </fo:block> > </fo:table-cell> > </fo:table-row> > </xsl:template> > > > Hope this gives you a clue... > > > Greetz, > > Andreas
Thanks for the example. vMax is a string length in this example though, right? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think proportional-column-width() will work with a string length will it? James --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
