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ohnehosen
Participating Frequently
Feb 3, 2015 3:28 PM UTC
Question

Changing Table Widths (FM 11 / DITA 1.2)

FM11 / DITA 1.2

I decided a while back that I would make all of my tables as wide as my pages for consistency in output. I have some tables that are a bit narrower, so I went into the XML files and resized them. When I open the files again (and on output), I find that the tables have reverted to their original widths. In some cases, this wrecks the text and causes breaks in weird places. The only way I've been able to fix this so far is to make a new table.

Why won't the changed table widths stay changed?

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4 replies

ScottPrentice
ScottPrentice
Inspiring
Feb 3, 2015 5:23 PM UTC

Table widths are tricky. DITA-FMx offers a number of options for controlling table widths, but with default FM-DITA I think that the only option is via the r/w rules file. If you open the rules file for your app(s), you'll see the following ..

writer use proportional widths;

If this is enabled, the tables will resize to fill the available text flow. If you comment this out, your tables should remain at the width you specify ..

/* writer use proportional widths; */

Cheers,

...scott

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    hadih26673991
    hadih26673991
    Inspiring
    Dec 11, 2019 10:03 AM UTC

    Hi Scott, commenting that sentence out, enables using absolute values only ina relative sense. FrameMaker still exapnds my DITA tables to the full available width. I also tried switching the pgwide attribute on and off, no influence! And since I am using xml format, the Resize Columns... option is being ignored. Is there a way to permanenly resize the table width?

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    hadih26673991
    hadih26673991
    Inspiring
    Dec 11, 2019 10:30 AM UTC

    So, in order to permanently change the width of table in xml files using DITA, one can set ForceTGroupAlignmentToLeft tp zero in ditafm.ini. But maybe there is a better way of doing this.

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