Graphics & Tables over 2 columns in PDF Output

[tems]

I'd like to reformat our rather long User's Guide into 2 columns using Flare's PDF output. But since a large number of our graphics and tables are wider than a single column they overprint the other column when outputting to PDF. Are there settings I can use to prevent this and make the PDF flow correctly?

[LTinker68]

You can set a max-width value for the img tag in the print medium, or whichever stylesheet/medium your PDF target points to.

[tems]

i'm not understanding. Where, specifically, is this set? is it for each image individually, or is there some sort of general setting? What effect does it have on the output?

Thanks.

[LTinker68]

Open the Stylesheet Editor for the stylesheet you're using for your print output. Switch the Stylesheet Editor view to the "print" medium. Scroll to the "img" style. Switch the Stylesheet Editor to Advanced view, select "Show: Property Groups", expand the "Unclassified" group, scroll down to max-width, then set it to 3 inches or whatever width your columns are set to in the page layout. Make sure you don't have the regular width attribute set on the img tag. If you have classes under the img tag, they should all inherit that max-width value, unless you specifically change its value for that class.

The max-width attribute won't resize an image unless its width exceeds that value, then it will automatically shrink it down to the value specified for the max-width. So if you have an image that's 5 inches wide, then it'll automatically shrink it down to 3 inches, but if your image is 2 inches wide, then it'll leave it at 2 inches.

That max-width attribute will apply to all images in any outputs that use the print medium of that stylesheet. If you have one stylesheet, that will include printing from a web page, although not all browsers support the max-width attribute. All of the newer ones should, but if you're using an older one, like IE6, then it may not work. But it should work for your PDF output. Viewing in the web page will be unaffected, as you're not setting the max-width attribute in the default medium, which is what online output uses.

[tems]

That's great--thanks so much.

[tems]

This works fine for graphics, but that setting doesn't seem to have any effect on my tables. Is there a way to set up the tables so that they don't go beyond a column width?

Thanks for your help.

[LTinker68]

I'm assuming you have the tables set to 100% width. If that's defined inline in the table tag, remove it from there. Instead, set the width to 100% in the stylesheet for the table tag in the default medium, then in the print medium set the table tag to have the width you want, like 3 inches or whatever. If you didn't define your column widths then they'll adjust automatically to fit the available space (depending on their contents, of course). If you defined your column width as pixels or points then you'll want to change them to percentages instead, so they'll adjust automatically to a percentage of the total table size.

Max-width might work with the table tag, too. If your tables are different widths in the online output then you'll want to create some classes of the table tag and set the width in the default medium for each class depending on how wide you want the table in the online output. You can adjust the width for each class in the print medium, too, if you don't want a table to fill the width of the column.

[tems]

Ah--that makes sense. Thanks very much.