Creating Static Tables

To insert a static table, click Table | Insert table or the

icon. The following dialog appears:

You can select the dimensions of the table and specify whether the table should occupy the whole available width. When you click OK, an empty table with the specified dimensions, as shown below, is created.

You can now enter content into table cells using regular StyleVision features. Cell content could be text, or elements dragged from the XML tree, or objects such as images and nested tables. The figure below shows a table containing nested tables.

Static SPS tables are especially well-suited for organizing XML data that is randomly situated in the schema hierarchy.

To delete a column, row, or table, place the cursor in the column, row, or table to be deleted, and click the menu item Table | Delete Column, Table | Delete Row, or Table | Delete Table, respectively. If you have nested tables, the table immediately containing the cursor will be deleted when the Table | Delete Table command is used.

The table editing icons in the second row of the toolbar are shortcuts to the Table menu commands. These commands allow you to insert, delete, edit the structure of, and assign formatting properties to the static table. These icons can also be used for dynamic tables. They cannot be used for XML tables, since XML tables cannot be created in StyleVision but must be created in Authentic View by the user. XML tables can only be enabled in StyleVision.

To ensure that tables are correctly rendered in the PDF output, the number of columns specified for a table (in the FO document) must be correct. (The number of columns can vary from row to row when cells span columns.) The following two points should be noted to ensure correct table definition for PDF output:

•

The number of columns in a table is the maximum number of columns in any row when all rows are considered. For example, if a table has three rows, with Row1 having 6 columns, Row2 having 5 columns, and Row3 having 7 columns, the number of columns in the table is 7. It is best, therefore, to specify, when inserting the static table, that the table should have 7 columns. Cells in the table can subsequently be joined so that they span columns. It is important to note that splitting a cell creates a new column in the graphic view but that is not added to the table's column count. In such an event, the table structure and dimensions will be incorrectly rendered in the PDF.

•	If the width of columns is to be specified, the total of all columns should add up to 100% or to an absolute measurement that is smaller than the width of the body-area of the page.

•	Make sure that widths are defined for each column, and not only for cells of a table. To check whether column widths have been correctly assigned, click the XSL-FO tab and check the widths of the fo:table-column child elements of the fo:table tag. For example, consider the table definition below:

In the listing above, the table is defined as having 5 columns, with the widths of each column being given in percentages.

XML Tables, for a description of how to work with table structures that are defined in the XML document.