Table of Contents
Advertisement
B
A t t r i b u t e s t r u c t u r e
The colspec empty element has attributes describing characteristics of a table column.
The spanspec empty element has attributes describing straddling characteristics of a
portion of a table. These elements have no counterpart in FrameMaker. They exist only to
have their attribute values specify information about other elements in the table.
The thead and tfoot heading and footing elements contain their own optional colspec
elements followed by one or more rows.
The tbody element contains one or more rows.
As supported by FrameMaker, a table row consists of a set of cells in entry elements,
each of which can contain only text. Readers familiar with the CALS model may notice that
these declarations do not include the entrytbl element which supports creating tables
within tables. FrameMaker does not allow tables within tables, so does not support this
element.
Attribute structure
Elements in the CALS table model use attributes to describe properties of the table such
as cell alignment or straddling behavior. For information on the meaning of the CALS
attributes, see "Formatting properties for tables" on page 276.
Inheriting attribute values
Some attributes are common to several elements in the description of a table. In these
cases, attribute values are inherited in the element hierarchy. The values of attributes
associated with colspec and spanspec elements act as though they were on the parent
element for inheritance purposes. That is, if a tgroup element has two colspec child
elements and a thead child element, the attributes of the colspec elements apply to the
thead element unless that element has its own colspec elements with attribute values
that override the inherited ones.
Orient attribute
In the CALS model, the table element has an orient attribute. This attribute is not
supported in FrameMaker, because there is no way in a FrameMaker table to specify
orientation on the page.
Straddling attributes
A spanspec element describes a column range so that a straddle cell can describe which
columns it spans by referencing a spanspec through its spanname attribute.
An entry element specifies which columns it occupies by one of three methods:
•
Using the namest and nameend attributes to reference columns explicitly. The namest
attribute indicates the first column in the straddle; the nameend attribute indicates the last
column.
Structure Application Developer's Guide
491
Advertisement
Table of Contents
