Hi,
Today I stumbled upon the issue with footnotes that get swallowed inside
list items and table cells. Searching the mailing list archives I
(re)discovered that this is a well known issue
(<http://xmlgraphics.apache.org/fop/knownissues.html>), formally
documented as a bug at
<http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37579>). From the
comments in the bug tracker, it seems that a) the bug won't be resolved
for anytime soon and b) there's no known workaround. However, since I
think I found a way of circumventing (or at least alleviating - see
bottom remark) the problem (at stylesheet level; not at Java code
level), I want to share it here for other XSL-FO strugglers as well.
(At first, I thought I had found a way around the issue already, from
previous work with Fop-0.20-5. If I recall correctly, that version did
render footnotes inside lists and certainly tables, but caused the text
of end-of-page lists to flow over the footnote text at the bottom of the
page. This could be 'fixed' by avoiding fo:list-block all the way.
However, this approach definitely doesn't work anymore with Fop-0.94+,
which 'swallows' fo:footnote content inside fo:list-block and fo:table.)
A way in which the problem can be avoided, is by generating fo:footnote
areas for those footnotes *outside* the areas of their containing lists
and tables. If those fo:footnote areas don't contain any text in their
fo:inline footnote markers, the latter don't show up in the inline text,
while the fo:footnote-body does end up in the footnote region at the
bottom of the page. [Note: this use of footnotes is inspired by
solutions to other vertical alignment issues like
<http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect3/fofixedposn.html#d12878e43>]
Stylesheet-wise this involves a two-way treatment of footnotes inside
lists and tables: 1) generate the footnote markers inline (just a
fo:inline containing the footnote marker suffices), 2) generate the
fo:footnote areas for each of those footnotes out-of-line, inside a
fo:block after the affected fo:list-block / fo:table.
I'll illustrate with following code, in which the first footnote doesn't
get rendered, while the second one does:
<fo:root xmlns:fo="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Format";>
<fo:layout-master-set>
<fo:simple-page-master master-name="simple" page-height="5in"
page-width="5in">
<fo:region-body/>
</fo:simple-page-master>
</fo:layout-master-set>
<fo:page-sequence master-reference="simple">
<fo:flow flow-name="xsl-region-body">
<fo:list-block provisional-distance-between-starts="50pt"
provisional-label-separation="10pt">
<fo:list-item>
<fo:list-item-label end-indent="label-end()">
<fo:block>label</fo:block>
</fo:list-item-label>
<fo:list-item-body start-indent="body-start()">
<fo:block>
<!-- This fo:block contains a 'regular' fo:footnote
inside a fo:list-block. Note that the fo:footnote-body
doesn't get rendered in the output, due to bug
37579
(http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=37579) -->
List item with a footnote<fo:footnote>
<fo:inline font-size="60%"
baseline-shift="super">1)</fo:inline>
<fo:footnote-body>
<fo:block start-indent="0.5cm" text-indent="-0.5cm">
<fo:inline font-size="60%"
baseline-shift="super">1)</fo:inline> This footnote doesn't get
rendered.</fo:block>
</fo:footnote-body>
</fo:footnote>.
</fo:block>
</fo:list-item-body>
</fo:list-item>
<fo:list-item>
<fo:list-item-label end-indent="label-end()">
<fo:block>label</fo:block>
</fo:list-item-label>
<fo:list-item-body start-indent="body-start()">
<fo:block>
<!-- this footnote is only marked inline by a
fo:inline marker -->
List item with a footnote<fo:inline font-size="60%"
baseline-shift="super">2)</fo:inline>.
</fo:block>
</fo:list-item-body>
</fo:list-item>
</fo:list-block>
<!-- this block contains the fo:footnote areas for all
separate footnotes in the previous fo:list-block -->
<fo:block>
<fo:footnote>
<!-- this fo:inline footnote marker is empty to avoid it
getting output after the fo:list-block -->
<fo:inline/>
<fo:footnote-body>
<fo:block start-indent="0.5cm" text-indent="-0.5cm">
<fo:inline font-size="60%"
baseline-shift="super">2)</fo:inline> This footnote does get
rendered.</fo:block>
</fo:footnote-body>
</fo:footnote>
</fo:block>
</fo:flow>
</fo:page-sequence>
</fo:root>
Note that this approach will require some refinements. For example, for
lists / tables that span multiple pages, the footnotes will all end up
before / after the affected list / table (depending on the placement of
their containing block). In order to avoid this, the fo:list-block /
fo:table areas could be generated at the lower level of the list items,
i.e. the input list / table will not generate a fo:list-block /
fo:table, but each list item / table row will. Each of those
fo:list-block / fo:table areas can then be followed by a fo:block
containing the relevant fo:footnote area. Of course this produces a lot
of one-item lists / one-row tables, but it also guarantees that
footnotes will show at the right page when they occur in long lists /
tables. I haven't tested it in my production XSL-FO stylesheets, and of
course treatment of nested lists would demand further consideration, but
I think the principle works.
Maybe I'm just stating the obvious (and apologies if I'm stealing
others' ideas), but since I couldn't find any reference to this approach
in the mailing list, I thought it could be useful for others as well.
I'm open for any comments or remarks.
Ron Van den Branden
www.kantl.be/ctb
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