Cell Level Control in Table Styles

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Daniel Feiglin
Propeller Head
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu May 02, 2013 4:33 am

Cell Level Control in Table Styles

Post by Daniel Feiglin »

I am moving from a FrameMaker background. FM allows you total control of table cell appearance using the Custom Ruling and Shading dialog. By contrast, the Flare Table style dialog only (seems?) to allow table ruling control at the row or column level. What am I missing? (BTW, The advice on p 106 of the Flare Tables Guide, using the cell Paragraph dialog, does not work.)

A related question: You can set up a table style as a separate table style CSS or as a span class in the project CSS. What is the conventional wisdom here on the best method? It is possible that in my previous question, the use of cell Paragraph dialog does something in a span class, whereas my table is styled through a full table style - maybe leading to a precedence problem?
LTinker68
Master Propellus Maximus
Posts: 7247
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:38 pm

Re: Cell Level Control in Table Styles

Post by LTinker68 »

The Table Stylesheet sets the look for cells by allowing you to specify how cells in a specific column or row should look. When you specify the styles, a td class is created and applied to the appropriate cells in that row or column.

The cell Paragraph dialog you mentioned is just that -- it's for paragraphs in the cell, not the cell itself. So it probably did work, but you need to insert a paragraph and add text to see the effect.

If you want to use the table stylesheet, then do so, but don't try to create your own cell classes and apply them to select table cells, because Flare will blow out that class when it rebuilds the table. You can set some attributes to the base td tag in the topic stylesheet, but most attributes will come from the table stylesheet. And, of course, if you insert paragraphs or lists, etc., inside your table, then the styles for those tags will come from the topic stylesheet.

The alternative is to not use the table stylesheet, then create your own table and td classes in the topic stylesheet and apply them manually to the table.
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Lisa
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Daniel Feiglin
Propeller Head
Posts: 18
Joined: Thu May 02, 2013 4:33 am

Re: Cell Level Control in Table Styles

Post by Daniel Feiglin »

Thanks for that. I'll need a bit of time to "digest it" and implement it. One thing that is clear: I'll be staying with the table style sheets rather than adding tables to the topic styles (re-use purposes).

Daniel
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