Writing documentation with DocBook-XML 4.3 |  |
Writing documentation with DocBook-XML 4.3 | |
Normally, your table will be fit into the page width
remaining after the current indentation level is
subtracted from the total page width. However, if you
need more width, use a pgwide="1"
attribute in the table element. This will
give you the whole width of the page to work with.
Your other job is to distribute this width among the columns of the table. You can do this in two ways:
You can assign a specific width to each column of the table. However, this can make life more difficult for people reading the Web version of your document if their window is too narrow for your table.
A better way is to specify the relative width of the columns. The advantage of this method is that in Web form your table can be resized to conform to the width of the browser window.
Regardless of which method you use, the width of each
column is specified in the colwidth
attribute of the colspec element, which
can take these values:
A number followed by a unit of measure. Units
include: pt (printer's points, about
1/72 inch), pi (picas, about 1/6
inch), mm (millimeters), cm (centimeters), or in
(inches). For example, colwidth="5.5cm" would specify a width of 5.5 centimeters.
A number followed by an asterisk. This allows you to
specify relative column widths. With this method,
all the numbers are added up, and the space is
divided according to the coefficients. The numbers
can be integers or fixed-point constants such as
5.25.
For example, suppose your table has four columns and
the values of the colwidth attribute are
"3*", "*",
"2*", and "2*". The sum of
these coefficients (the second value is the same as
"1*") is 8. The resulting table would
allocate 3/8 of the width to the first column, 1/8 of
the width to the second column, and 1/4 of the width
to each of the third and fourth columns.