Curious: table header, row, footer functional differences?

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Rene Severens
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Curious: table header, row, footer functional differences?

Post by Rene Severens »

Hi,

I am wondering if there are any functional differences in using a table stylesheet and defining styles for a header row, a footer row, and normal table rows.
If not using header rows and footer rows, but only normal rows, it seems that all defined styles can be applied. So are there any functional differences using table header and table footers? Can someone give an example of using a table header or footer and style it in such manner that cannot be done if using a normal table row?

Greetings,
René Severens.
"The numbers are strange today; they somehow do not seem to add up."
LTinker68
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Re: Curious: table header, row, footer functional differences?

Post by LTinker68 »

First thing that comes to mind is that it's easier for consistency of styles. If you want all your header rows to have a blue background with white text and inner borders, then you define that style on the <th> tag and it's automatically used when you specify a header row in the table. Likewise with the footer row.

Second thing that comes to mind is that you can repeat the header row from page-to-page, although I don't have Flare open at the moment and don't remember what style definition has to be added to the stylesheet to get that to work. There might be an option in the Table Stylesheet GUI, but I always used to add it manually to the topic stylesheet.

If you were asking for difference between using a table stylesheet and defining the styles in the topic stylesheet, then the only real advantage to the table stylesheet is that it's easier to define alternating row colors or alternating column colors. If you want to alternate row/column colors and don't have any merged cells in the table, then I'd definitely go with a table stylesheet. If you're not using alternating rows/columns or have merged cells, then I'd define the styles in the topic stylesheet and manually apply the classes to the rows/cells. The latter can be more time-consuming since you'll throw things off if you insert a new row or column and have to remove and reapply styles, but you have more control over the appearance, especially with merged cells.
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Rene Severens
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Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 2:06 am
Location: Netherlands - Zoetermeer
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Re: Curious: table header, row, footer functional differences?

Post by Rene Severens »

Hi,

Style consistency is defnitely one. The repeating of a header from page to page is one that will be seen in PDF output, but in online output this will not be seen that much, though you could repeat a header inside a long table.
I already ran into some issues using a table stylesheet for a table with merged cells, but indeed, when editing such a table, I mostly ended up with reapplying the styles again and finally manually selecting cells that still are formatted wrong and apply an inline format to overrule.

Depending on the audience, there might also be some 508 issues, if no row is tagged as header. I found that a specific way of creating tables is needed so for example text readers can understand the table contents in such way that they can differentiate header from contents, making it easier for the user to understand the table when processes by a text reader.

Thanks for your info.

Greetings,
René Severens
"The numbers are strange today; they somehow do not seem to add up."
NorthEast
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Re: Curious: table header, row, footer functional differences?

Post by NorthEast »

A good reason not to use row styles instead of headers/footers, is that you'll lose any 'custom' row (or column) styles that you've manually applied if you change the table style.
Even if both table stylesheets have the same row/column style name, Flare will reformat the whole table from scratch if you change the table style.
This doesn't happen if you use the headers and footers.
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