RE: Tables now supported

[Gregory Leblanc <GLeblanc cu-portland edu>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ali Abdin [mailto:aliabdin@aucegypt.edu]
> Sent: Wednesday, August 09, 2000 6:12 PM
> To: Gregory Leblanc
> Cc: gnome-doc-list@gnome.org
> Subject: Re: Tables now supported
> 
> > > I have some questions though:
> > > 
> > > 1) What does the <tgroup> tag do? I ignore it for now, and 
> > > everything seems to
> > > work fine. Jade also 'seems' to ignore it.
> > 
> > http://www.DocBook.org/tdg/html/tgroup.html
> > 
> > Check out the section on "Processing expectations" for the 
> sort of info that
> > you want.
> > I think that <tgroup> is designed for grouping sections of 
> a very large,
> > very complex table together.  I don't have anything that 
> complex handy.  Is
> > anybody using <tgroup>?
> 
> Well - the table usage's I saw used <tgroup> but they had no 
> real effect on
> the table as far as I could tell :) I guess they were not 
> complex enough. 
> 
> And I really do hope that nobody comes along with a REALLY 
> complex table (just
> so they can break my fragile code)

So I guess that wouldn't be a good project for the evening, huh?  :-)  I'm
actually far more concerned about/interested in what this converter will do
for non-GNOME docs.  I know that I would REALLY like this to be able to
render ALL DocBook (and probably *roff and info) documentation on my system.


> > > 3) Can <table> have an id attribute? (i.e. <table 
> > > id="table1">) What about
> > > <informaltable>, can it have an id attribute?
> > 
> > No, both table types cannot have ID attributes. 
> 
> Okay - now I can remove a bunch of code that I spent a while
> coding/understanding (well - at least i now understand how to 
> use SectContext)

Just out of curiosity, is the code that you're working on capable of
rendering a <section> within another <section> with different rules?  I.E.
You give <sect1> a format of X, and <sect2> a format of Y.  Can
<section><section> look like <sect2> would?  If that's not clear, let me
know, I'll try to translate it into proper English.

> > > I would also like to know of any bugs you encounter with 
> > > table support. I've
> > > only really tested it on the kernel-locking.sgml file telsa 
> > > provided me with.
> > > (Note: I have table support on my local tree only - you will 
> > > have to wait
> > > until I check it into CVS)
> > 
> > Let us know when it's checked in, I did manage to compile 
> it once, but that
> > was months ago.  I'd like to try it out on a couple of 
> non-gnome documents
> > as well, just to see what it does.  :-)  You might want to 
> keep a link to
> > http://www.DocBook.org/tdg/html/docbook.html handy, it has 
> links to an
> > explanation of each of the DocBook elements.  It's a good 
> reference, but
> > somewhat boring to read.  :-)
> 
> Well, you could keep your eye on cvs-commits list ;) I 
> should've checked it in
> today, but I noticed Darin made a 'pre-emptive' fix in 
> help-method.c (which
> causes a few conflicts on my side that I need to clean-up)

Hmm, good point.  I've stayed away from it, because I'm generally not all
that interested in CVS code, except for an occasional module, like this one,
and maybe later Evolution.  Guess it's time to sign up for the digest.  :)

> I didn't look at that URL yet, but I've added it to my 
> bookmarks list. So far
> though, looking at jade output[1] and reverse-engineering it 
> seems to work
> okay ;)

That's probably going to be good enough, most of the time.  Sometimes Jade
doesn't "do the right thing", although that's mostly with "other formats"
and not with HTML.  

> Regards,
> Ali
> 
> [1] Jade's output is the ugliest thing I have seen in my 
> life, so I have
> started making a concious effort to at least make 
> gnome-db2html2's output look
> better :)

Yes, but it's ugly by design.  Check out the program called "Tidy" by
somebody at w3c.  It does a WONDERFUL job of cleaning HTML into something
readable (even the output from, ugh, MS Word).  That might make it easier
for you to actually figure out the HTML code that Jade produces.  You can
get Tidy from http://www.w3.org/People/Raggett/tidy/, rpmfind tidy, or
probably apt-get tidy.  Later,
	Greg