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Paul Marcomms
Participant
August 28, 2009
Question

EDD Newbie

  • August 28, 2009
  • 1 reply
  • 994 views

Can someone help me? I'm new to writing EDDS and am struggling with the correct format for a context rule I'm trying to create.

I have a document divided into a number of sections. Each section starts with a Heading element and this is followed by other elements such as Paragraphs and Tables and can have other sections nested within it.

The EDD is written such that each Heading narmally has a space above it of 12.5 pts. However, when a section is preceeded by a section whose last element is a Table, I need to increase the space above by +3 pts.

Can someone suggest a way to do this?

"If context is: Section {after Section}" works but applies the change to every section regardless. How can this be modified to check that the last element in the preceeding section is a table before applying the change?

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1 reply

P
Paul MarcommsAuthor
Participant
August 28, 2009

Further to this, I've found that the Context Rule "If context is: Section {after Table} < Section" works fine when the section is nested within the one containing the table as a final element but not when the section is not nested.

Hope this makes sense !!

R
Russ Ward
Legend
August 28, 2009

Hi Paul,

Unfortunately, the answer is that an EDD does not support this, at least not directly. Context rules can look at direct siblings, but they cannot look at a previous sibling's descendants.

If this is important to you, you might be able to find a workaround. Some ideas are:

- Create a special container element for tables that applies the spacing below it. A separate container for tables is normally best practice anyway, as it provides a separate, empty paragraph for each table anchor. Tables tend to behave much better this way. Of course, this approach will apply the spacing after all tables, not just those at the end of sections. Normally, table container elements are designed to be inconspicuous in the text, such as applying a 2pt font so that they are very small.

- Do what I just suggested, but take it a step further and add a {last} context rule to the table container element that applies the spacing below. This will allow the spacing to be applied whenever the EDD detects that the table is last on its branch and should have the same effect as trying to do the reverse by applying the spacing on the next section. If you do that, you'll still need the context rule on the section too, in order to handle the case where the next section is on the same branch as the table (ie, it is a subsection). Between these two rules, I think it should cover all instances of your tables.

Good luck,

Russ

P
Paul MarcommsAuthor
Participant
September 1, 2009

Hi Russ

Many thanks for a most helpful suggestion.

We do have our tables in Container elements but I found that applying a space below the table pushed the whole table down away from the element above it. This was not desirable but I found that changing the Line spacing worked so I set it to a height that gave me the correct space below the table in a {last} context rule as you suggested.

Once again, many thanks for your help.

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