Macro-level application of Table Stylesheet?

[cnovici]

I am converting a FM book to a WebHelp target. The content contains a number of tables that are automatically converted to a table.default style by Flare.

I would like all my tables in WebHelp to be identically styled with black gridlines and a black lined outer border. Although I am able to modify the table.default to render a black lined outer border, I am unable to render the black gridlines. That is, unless I use the Basic table stylesheet which renders the gridlines, no problem.

However, according to MadCap technical support, this Basic table stylesheet must be applied manually (using Table Properties)to each table topic by topic for the gridlines. There is no macro-level method of applying the table stylesheet to all my tables. If this is true, IMHO this utterly defeats the purpose of having a table stylesheet in the first place!

Given that I have rougly 60 tables that I want identically styled, does anyone have any suggestions as to how I could accomplish this at a macro-level? Is there some sort of method to apply the table stylesheet to all my tables without having to go the "manual" route? Or conversely, how can I tweak the table.default style in the regular stylesheet such that gridlines appear?

Thanks.

[KevinDAmery]

What happens with the table styles is a separate css is applied to that describes the table formatting - this is why it doesn't get applied automatically, Flare would have to add the code to call that css to each table (which would not be friendly if you didn't want all of your tables to use the same style...) Now, I think what they should do is add a way to assign table styles to content automatically during an import, the same as you can map Frame or Word paragraph styles to the CSS styles in Flare. But that would require a feature request. You can make one here if you like:

http://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx

You could, however, add it using the Find and Replace functions. You would need to enable the "find in source code" option. Here's what the find and replace lines would look like assuming you wanted the default style.

Find:

Code: Select all

<table

Replace

Code: Select all

<table mc-table-style: url('../../Resources/TableStyles/Default.css');" class="TableStyle_Default";

IMPORTANT: Backup your Flare topics to somewhere safe before doing any "find in source code" operation. Just in case.