Thanks Hussein, It makes sense to me that as soon as I resize one column using the dragging feature, that all the columns are immediately assigned proportional widths; the feature needs something to size against. It would be nice to be able to define the total width of the table in some way and have the proportional values key off of it, but I don't see that anywhere in the spec of either Docbook or DITA, so I suppose that's off the table.
However, I would suggest that all adjustments following the first one (which set the proportions of all the columns) would be strictly a transaction between the columns to the left and the right of the line being dragged, and any rounding needed to make the numbers balance be performed only on those two colspecs. Perhaps I'm missing something significant about the use of proportional sizing vs. percentage. Given that both divide the table into 100 units of negotiable size and assign the colspec elements values that add up to an even total, I don't really see how they'd be different in practice. I should add that my first message related to XMLmind 5.4.1. I just tested the same scenario in 5.7 and the outcome is less severe, but still undesirable. The two columns being adjusted always gave away a single point of their value to the final column in the table, while the other columns remained stable. Thanks, Jeff. -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Hussein Shafie Sent: December-18-13 12:26 PM To: Jeff Hooker Cc: '[email protected]' Subject: Re: [XXE] Resizing table columns On 12/18/2013 07:55 PM, Jeff Hooker wrote: > > When using the click-and-drag feature to resize table columns, I don't > understand the rationale behind how my actions affect the table. > > When I have a table with 5 columns, and I grab the line separating > column 2 and column 3 and drag it to the right, rather than just > making column 2 bigger and column 3 smaller, column 5 also grows and > every column other than column 5 and column 2 shrinks. > > When I grab the same line and drag it to the left now, once again > column > 5 grows. In fact, every time I adjust any of the first four columns, > column 5 grows and every column other than the column I'm expanding > and column 5 shrinks. > > I've looked for some logic in how this resizing is being applied, but > can't find it. It makes it difficult to use this feature to actually > size a table's columns because columns that I'm not touching are > nevertheless changing with every adjustment. > > What am I missing here? > Generally speaking, if you use the "drag column to resize it" feature, then you must accept to loose some control on the widths of the columns of the table. We have chosen to express the width of a CALS/DocBook table columns in proportional measures. Example: <colspec colwidth="3*"/> We have chosen to express the width of an HTML table columns in percentages. Example: <colgroup with="6%"/> The behavior you describe sometimes cannot be avoided because the width of a column is expressed in proportional measures or in percentages (coarse rounding of the widths of the columns of the table). The behavior you describe would never happen if we had chosen to express the width of columns in pixels or in another absolute unit (pt, pc, etc). This being said, after reading your severe report, we'll thoroughly recheck our implementation. May be we'll be able to improve how the "drag column to resize it" feature works in the case of proportional measures (percentages seem to give better results than proportional measures). -- XMLmind XML Editor Support List [email protected] http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-support -- XMLmind XML Editor Support List [email protected] http://www.xmlmind.com/mailman/listinfo/xmleditor-support
