DOCBOOK: Re: table entry formatting

[David Penton <dpenton at arrowsash dot com>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Norman Walsh" <ndw@nwalsh.com>
To: "David Penton" <dpenton@arrowsash.com>
Cc: <docbook@lists.oasis-open.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2001 8:24 PM
Subject: Re: table entry formatting


> / David Penton <dpenton@arrowsash.com> was heard to say:
> | and the display of borders.  But I cannot spot anyplace where one might
> | control what goes on inside a table entry.  Specifically, where would
one
> | express the geometry of the area inside the rectangular boundaries of
the
> | entry (cell margins, or padding, or whatever these things are properly
> | called)?
>
> The CALS Table Model gives relatively little control over these
> presentational features.
>
> | We use Arbortext Epic to create our documents.  We did not purchase the
> | Arbortext composition software (if that is the correct term - you know,
the
> | printing stuff).  We eventually will print using the Advent 3b2 product.
> | But for now, the authoring group is trying to learn how to deal with
table
> | creation.  Epic's interactive table editing capability appears to assume
> | that a cell entry has margins or padding surrounding the contents of a
table
> | entry.
>
> Can you give some specific examples of the sort of control you'd like
> to have?

Well, I was thinking of something like the CELLPADDING attribute in html
tables.  Those who have been creating tables in our data in the past (using
WordPerfect, and sometimes Word) seem to think they need control over the
margins around text in table cells.  In contrast our authors are quite
content with the lack of such control for other elements in our documents.
That is, they have caught on to the notion of "standard" presentation by
means of a stylesheet external to the xml instance.

Maybe what I am really asking is generally what the presentation strategy is
for CALS tables, since tables seem to be inherently more oriented to
presentation than other xml "semantic" markup.  (Or not, in which case I'm
wrong.)  Is it that stylesheets that handle CALS have built-in assumptions
about things not specifiable in CALS markup?  I seem to recall that Epic
resorts to PI's for some table presentation issues.  Perhaps if I actually
looked in your modular stylesheets I would catch on to the strategy.  Do you
think that would help?  Or am I just hopelessly muddled about tables?

- Dave Penton -


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