[xep-support] Spans and column-number

From: Gustaf Liljegren (gustaf.liljegren@xml.se)
Date: Tue Oct 08 2002 - 06:44:31 PDT


Hello all,

Lately, I've become obsessed by the idea of having a column-number on each
<fo:table-cell>. The reason is I've seen XEP saying:

  {!table cells overlap, skipping a cell}

Overlapping cells disappear. This problem goes away if I only specify the
column numbers correctly.

The problem now is how to calculate the column-number property in the
template for table cells. It gets really tough if you have complex patterns
of spans. Norman Walsh asked a similar question here

  http://www.biglist.com/lists/xsl-list/archives/200107/msg00640.html

and I have some great respect for him, so I think I'm getting out of my
depth here. I gave these examples earlier on XSL List.

+---+---+---+
| | | |
+---+---+---+
| | X |
+-------+---+

<tr>
  <td/>
  <td/>
  <td/>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td colspan="2"/>
  <td>X</td>
</tr>

X has the column number 3, not 2. And in this example,

+---+---+---+
| | | |
| +---+---+
| | X | |
+---+---+---+

<tr>
  <td rowspan="2"/>
  <td/>
  <td/>
</tr>
<tr>
  <td>X</td>
  <td/>
</tr>

X has column number 2, not 1.

Isn't it wrong that spans, which is not an unusual feature in tables,
should be so hard to implement? Is there anything that could have been done
in the XSL spec, something you implementors can do now, or something others
can do as generic extension functions? Otherwise, it's only the hardcore
XSLT option left. It's scary. :-|

Gustaf

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