FrameMaker support for column-wise table continution?

Report · Mar 10, 2010

I am working with FM 7.2 in a scenario where a table is programmatically generated and I cannot predict how many columns it will contain.

I am 99.44 percent sure that the answer to this question is no, but I may as well be optimistic and pop the question.

Is there any support, in a later version of FM, for a table format parameter telling FM to magically make the table span pages horizontally if the sum of the column widths exceeds the width of the frame?

So a table could be continued column-wise as well as row-wise.

Also, I would be able to specify that the left-most column or two columns be repeated when spanning.

Thanks in advance,

Sallie Satterthwaite

Report · Mar 10, 2010

FrameMaker has some *magic* regarding table positioning, but not to the precise extent you are requesting.

If you have a side-head area in your document and your tables left indent is set to 0 the table stays inside the textframe as long as it is smaller than the text frame. If it gets wider then the text frame, at a certain point it jumps to the left of the side-head area, giving you more room for additional columns.

Not exactly what you wanted. But anyway, your process somehow must calculate the column widths and therefor has to know about the text frame width. If this does not help, it is possible to create a post-processing routine (via FrameScript for example) to correct misaligned tables.

- Michael Müller-Hillebrand

Report · Mar 10, 2010

Thank you, Michael, it's not the answer I wanted but it is the answer!

-Sallie