We are in the process of converting our documentation from FrameMaker to Flare and it's going pretty well except for tables. We currently only have two tables of tables that we use:
A standard table with a header, a caption, and rows that are identical in formatting (left and top aligned; same background color, etc)
An item list table that is identical to the standard table expect that the items in the left-most column should be centered and bolded.
It appears from the Flare help that table stylesheets as most useful for complex tables that have a pattern in formatting, such as different colors rows. Is creating table stylesheets overkill for our situation? I know the standard table can be formatted using a regular stylesheet. I think the item list table can be, as well; we'd just set up a class or two to handle the "centered, bold" requirement for the left-most column.
Does anyone have any thoughts on the approach we should take re: regular vs table stylesheets?
If everything in the two table stylesheets are identical except for the centered and bolded column, you can get away with a single table stylesheet. Just add a custom column that centers and bolds its contents. Then, when an author uses that table stylesheet, they can select that first column and then select the custom column to make the contents centered and bold. Explicitly selecting that custom column will override the pattern column that the table uses by default for the first column.
Scroll down to the section called "ROW/COLUMN/HEADER/FOOTER STYLES" and compare the descriptions of Pattern and Custom. And there's an extended example that illustrates how a how custom row is overriding a pattern row. The principle applies to custom columns.
Nita
RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
Although Nita's suggestion is really neat, I would tend to go for two separate table stylesheets, for ease of use when you or anyone else is adding or formatting tables. If you have two, you "just"* have to select the one you want, rather than having to go into the table and select stuff.
When putting stylesheets etc together, I try to go for the solution that'll be most obvious to the next person to pick up the project, and I think having tables that have obviously different stylesheets applied will cause less headscratching from anyone who might not be aware of how you applied the bold+centred thing to the first column and they might then "just"* add that formatting inline.
So you don't have too much pain creating two, make sure the first one is spot on, then "all you have to do is"* create a copy, rename the copy, and apply the bold+centred bit to the first column in the normal way, without having to add a custom column.
* (Apologies for using weasel words - these are the phrases I always look out for when anyone is suggesting what to do or how to do it.)
And as for using table stylesheets over "just"* applying the normal table styles from your regular stylesheet, then yeah, definitely use table styleheets, even if you only need two. The table stuff in the regular stylesheet is used in other unexpected places (like when creating tables of contents in PDFs) so you could potentially end up with unexpected outcomes if you want to add things like borders and colouring.
I do agree with the overarching design philosophy of seeking the simplest solution, especially one that supports ease of use.
However, I feel quite strongly that there is also an argument for ease of maintenance. (I presented a whole session on designing for maintenance several MadWorlds back.)
I had a client once whose single table stylesheet included a lot of custom columns that authors would use to set an explicit width on a column. The stylesheet had custom columns for 20%, 30%, 40% etc. If instead we had upwards of 7 or 8 nearly-identical individual table stylesheets, it would have been a big pain in the butt if, at some point in future when branding requirements changed, we would have had to edit the whole set of tables stylesheets, individually. But from the authors' viewpoint, it was just a matter of their being trained on and then adopting the best-practice way of adjusting the width of a column, which was to select the custom column offered by the table stylesheet.
Sometimes, a client makes it a requirement that I design things that can be easily and quickly rebranded, as their software products have their clients' branding replace their internal branding. (I hope that makes sense.) I think they called it "white labeling"...
Nita
RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
To press my point further (sorry, Choccie!), from an ease of use point of view, I think it's no more difficult to have a user have to select a custom column within the already applied table stylesheet than it is to instead set the whole table to a different table stylesheet. I actually think it's easier. Users don't have to remember which of perhaps many table stylesheets to use.
Nita
RETIRED, but still fond of all the Flare friends I've made. See you around now and then!
Nita, I'm always happy to defer to your knowledge and experience - in fact, I'm going to do a bit of thinking about a relatively new project I've got, and will try to implement your suggestion there.