Formatting tables with missing cell

[juergenpurtz]

How can I format a table where not all cells are present? I like to see column data according to the logic: <firstname> in first column and <familyname> in second column.

Example:

Code: Select all

<persons>

  <person>

    <name>

      <firstname>Donald</firstname>

      <familyname>Duck</familyname>

    </name>

  </person>

  <person>

    <name>

      <familyname>Goofy</familyname>

    </name>

  </person>

</persons>

[Radu]

Dear Juergen,

Sorry for the delay.

So the post relates to displaying a table in the Author page.

The Oxygen Author page is CSS driven but your XML structure is not quite compatible with a table structure. For a table you need an XML element which is the table (for example "persons"), an XML element which is a table row (for example "person") and you need child elements of the row to be the table cells. But in your case you would like the child elements of "name" to be table cells.

What you can do as a workaround would be to define each "person" as a table in the CSS, then each "name" as a row and its children as table cells like:

Code: Select all

persons{

    display:block;

}



person{

  display:table;

}



name{

    display:table-row;

}



firstname,

familyname{

    display:table-cell;

    /*Set a large width to the cells to make it look like a real table*/

    /*But if the text content overflows the cell width then the structure will not behave like a real table*/

    width:200px;

    border: 1px solid black;

}

So you will have a bunch of tables, one on top of the other but the cells will have the same preferred width and thus it will look like a single table.

This entire XML structure will look like a single table (although it's not) as long as the content of each cell does not overflow the "200px" limit imposed in the CSS.

Regards,
Radu

[juergenpurtz]

Sorry, my example was unnecessary complicate. The <name> tags should be eliminated from the example. So we have table <persons> with rows of <person> and cells of <firstname> and <familyname>.

Code: Select all

<persons>

  <person>

    <firstname>Donald</firstname>

    <familyname>Duck</familyname>

  </person>

  <person>

    <familyname>Goofy</familyname>

  </person>

</persons>

[Radu]

Hi Juergen,

So you want that if the first cell is missing, the second cell in the row (in this case "familyname") to be presented on the second column.

This is not possible to specify from the CSS. So unfortunately I cannot give you a solution.

Regards,
Radu

[juergenpurtz]

After one year is elapsed I like to ask, whether there is a new feature in the product which solve the problem of missing cells?

[Radu]

Hi Juergen,

Sorry but no. And I do not think there is anything on our side which could be done to handle your situation.
Maybe you could add a restriction in the XML so that even if a first name is not available, the tag should appear with empty contents like:

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<firstname/>

Regards,
Radu