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1-Visitor
December 12, 2012
Question

EXTERNAL: Rotated text in table header rows (FOSI)

  • December 12, 2012
  • 6 replies
  • 2808 views
For those of you following along at home, I hacked the TeX code in the FOSI to move the rotated text over to the right by changing the original code from this:
<usetext source="%\hbox{\special{pub:" rotate=" 90}%,10pt,#content,%}%&quot;="></usetext>

To this:
<usetext source="%\hbox{" }\hbox{=" }\hbox{=" }\hbox{\special{pub:=" rotate=" 90}%,10pt,#content,%}%&quot;="></usetext> (The curly braces in the initial 3 \hbox{ } "commands" need to have a space in them. Empty curly braces won't work.)

There is probably a better, more elegant and more "TeX-y" way of doing this, but for now, this works.

    6 replies

    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    Looks like you got it. I don't remember the exact presentation problem we
    ended up with after deploying the tex, but we futzed around with cell
    padding, removed it all (on one side?). Can't remember. I could look it up
    if you want it


    ebenton1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    Thanks, but that is not necessary. I tried aligning the text right and that did nothing, but once again, I did not think of doing cell padding on the left. Duh (again).
    ebenton1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    It looks like cell padding does have an effect and would probably work OK on most tables, but when you have a table with many, or any number of, narrow columns, the necessary amount of cell padding can be a significant percentage of the cell width. The cell padding PI does not seem to be able to be applied to just one row. It's either the whole table or nothing. This is fine for the header row, where my text is formatted vertically, but for the remaining non-header rows with narrow columns, it can screw up the formatting of the contents of those cells.
    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    Here is an XML sample and some of the e-i-c's we've used. Turns out it
    wasn't cell padding ... it was futzing with the offset. I think. Again,
    this is old ... we used it until tables started supporting the rotate
    attribute and I stripped most of it out. I think I still support the
    <rotate> element somewhere but I'm not sure anyone uses it anymore.

    <entry align="center" valign="bottom">
    <para>!,%\hbox{\special{pub: rotate 90}%,<rotated_impact_cell.fmt>,\Key
    Lime Pie\,</rotated_impact_cell.fmt>,%}%,!</para>
    </entry>

    <e-i-c gi="rotate">
    <charlist inherit="1" charsubsetref="suppress">
    <usetext source="%\hbox{\special{pub:" rotate<br="/>90}%,<rotated_cell.fmt>,#CONTENT,</rotated_cell.fmt>,%}%">
    <subchars></subchars>
    </usetext>
    </charlist>
    </e-i-c>
    <e-i-c gi="rotated_cell.fmt">
    <charlist inherit="1">

    </charlist>
    </e-i-c>
    <e-i-c gi="rotated_impact_cell.fmt">
    <charlist inherit="1">

    </charlist>
    </e-i-c>


    ebenton1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    Geez, another table formatting attribute that I haven't ever played with much. Thanks.
    1-Visitor
    December 12, 2012
    I think that's actually messing with the text's baseline. If I'm
    remembering correctly (and I could be wrong ... did I say I wrote that code
    a long time ago, right?!), the baseline on TeX rotated text is - for right,
    + for left.

    Truth be told, it's probably Trudy Bihlmeyer's code I just copy/pasted.
    Then tweaked.