Table row height in Editor view

[ClayHelberg]

Hi folks-



I'm working with tables, and I'm trying to set the height of a row to a
very small value (in essence to hide the row). This is with the standard
CALS table model.



I've set the tableminimumrowheight and tableminimumemptyrowheight
options to small values, and with the usual
PI, I can get the desired result in PDF output.



But I'd like to see the same result in the Editor window as well. Is
this possible? All content of the row in question is suppressed, but the
table editor seems to have its own idea of minimum row height separate
from the tableminimumrowheight and tableminimumemptyrowheight options
that the print engine uses. When I try to drag the row separator to
shrink the row, it pops back to some default height of about a line. If
I set the pseudo-attribute on the PI manually, the value sticks but
doesn't seem to affect the Editor view. (If I set it to a *large* value,
I do see that reflected in the Editor view. But it won't let me go below
a certain size.)



Has anyone run into this before and found a workaround?



If not, any help brainstorming alternate ways to hide a row in the
editor view (without actually removing it from the table) would also be
appreciated.



--Clay

[naglists]

We set some rows to .1mm for output. We've never successfully been able to
reflect that in Editor, but honestly, we didn't pursue it that far.

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Suzanne—



I would like to hide the entire row, not just the content. (I figured out how to do hide the content without too much trouble.) The row(s) to be hidden are indicated by a (namespaced) attribute on the <row> element.



I was hoping for a pure Styler solution, but if it takes a FOSI source edit to make it work, I guess I can live with that.



--Clay

[ptc-1908075]

Hi Clay!

It sounds like you want to hide a particular row in a particular table so it
does not display in the Edit window. Do you want to hide the row's presence from
users? Or just hide the content from users?

Either way, it seems like there might be something a screen FOSI or editor-only
attribute rule could do to accomplish this. The first issue is how will the FOSI
know which row in which table should be hidden?I

Suzanne

SuzanneNapoleon@FOSIexpert.com
"WYSIWYG is last-century technology!"




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[ptc-1908075]

Clay,

I could not find a way to hide a table row in the Edit window.

I had the same experience as you did with
tableminimumrowheight  and tableminimumemptyrowheight. Negative prespace didn't
work in the Edit window. I set fontpercent=100 in the Editor, and  I set font to
0.001pt in the FOSI,. However, entering att at the command line in the Editor
indicated the font used is 0.10pt shown at 4pt, which I suspect is a built-in
minimum. You could ask Arbortext if there is a way to change that. In the table
editor, I tried setting top and bottom cell margins to zero, which worked for
the top margin but not the bottom margin. Maybe that's a bug.

The only other thing I can think of is to take a different approach that may not
apply to your situation: Provide a keymapping or menu item to set the attribute
on the row to be hidden. Scripting for it would:

1. Check that the row has content
2. Save the row contents in ACL variable(s)
3. Delete the row
4. Set an attribute on the previous row to indicate the next row is "hidden" in
the Edit window but should be  output for print/PDF
5. Set an attribute or pseudo-attribute on the table for the FOSI to test to
determine if it needs the following special processing
6. In the FOSI, for print-only, transform the authored table into a gentable
that includes the hidden/deleted row. Specifically, the e-i-c for row would test
for the hidden-row attribute in order to output the hidden row after the current
row, getting the content from the ACL variable(s). NOTE: Surround the generated
table with a context pseudo-element so the markup in the gentable can have
e-i-cs that are different from e-i-cs for regular table markup (otherwise an
infinite loop could be created). For example: e-i-c gi="row" context="tbody
tgroup table" would test for the hidden-row attribute, but e-i-c gi="row"
context="tbody tgroup table gentable.ctx" would not.

Hope this helps!

Good luck!
Suzanne



----------

[ClayHelberg]

Hi Suzanne—



Thanks, I appreciate you looking into it. If you can’t figure it out either, then I don’t feel so bad that I couldn’t make it work. 🙂



I don’t think I’ll be able to use variables to store the hidden (removed) rows, because the information in the rows has to persist (be saved in the document). But I have a few ideas to try along similar lines, maybe using XML comments or processing instructions to get the table editor to ignore the row(s) in question.



--Clay

[ptc-1908075]

Clay,

Good point! Hmmm ... maybe the variables could be written back to the table when
the document is closed? The attribute settings would indicate where they would
go.

In any case, I'd be interested in learning what you finally come up with.
Optimizing the user's experience in Arbortext Editor is an area of interest to
me.

Good luck! 😉
Suzanne



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