Re: multi-column layout and footnotes
Luca, I was intrigued by your idea though I see difficulties determining the right intra-page/column breaks for situations where the line height are not uniform and possibly have penalties that could interfere with later break decision already made. At least, mixed single-/multicolumn situations should be quite easy to handle since you could simply copy multiple footnote sections (one per span group) together. The current design should already help with that. Anyway, I'll defer this problem for later, since there are more important things to deal with. After all, we need to get a more or less usable FOP version out ASAP. I've documented my findings and the current status briefly on the Wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/xmlgraphics-fop/MultiColumnLayout On 28.06.2005 18:45:06 Luca Furini wrote: > Jeremias Maerki wrote: > > > I just hope this breaking-up of the > > span-reference-areas won't cause too many problems with keeping the > > footnotes working. I'm a bit worried about that. We'll see. > > I was thinking about this too: the texbook, speaking about footnotes and > columns, says something interesting: paginating a page of height H, N > columns ans footnotes having the whole width is quite similar to > paginating a page of height N*H, with a single column, where the height of > each footnote line has a magnification factor = N. > > I think that this way the column break could be seen as "moving indexes", > dividing the normal content in pieces of equal length, that could be > updated while adding some more normal content. (this could mean that > having balanced columns could be even easier than having unbalanced ones!) > > These are just some thoughts, as I did not try and implement anything yet > ... > > Regards > Luca Jeremias Maerki
Re: multi-column layout and footnotes
Jeremias Maerki wrote: Do I interpret 6.10.1.3 correctly that the footnote-reference-area always spans the whole width of the region-body even when the page contents are rendered in multiple columns? Given that AntennaHouse has an extension element for creating per-column footnotes, and the already quoted text from the spec, I'm pretty sure you're right. I just hope this breaking-up of the span-reference-areas won't cause too many problems with keeping the footnotes working. I'm a bit worried about that. Me too. But I'm confident you'll manage this :-) J.Pietschmann
Re: multi-column layout and footnotes
Jeremias Maerki wrote: I just hope this breaking-up of the span-reference-areas won't cause too many problems with keeping the footnotes working. I'm a bit worried about that. We'll see. I was thinking about this too: the texbook, speaking about footnotes and columns, says something interesting: paginating a page of height H, N columns ans footnotes having the whole width is quite similar to paginating a page of height N*H, with a single column, where the height of each footnote line has a magnification factor = N. I think that this way the column break could be seen as "moving indexes", dividing the normal content in pieces of equal length, that could be updated while adding some more normal content. (this could mean that having balanced columns could be even easier than having unbalanced ones!) These are just some thoughts, as I did not try and implement anything yet ... Regards Luca
Re: multi-column layout and footnotes
On 28.06.2005 14:07:49 Vincent Hennebert wrote: > Jeremias Maerki a écrit : > > Do I interpret 6.10.1.3 correctly that the footnote-reference-area > > always spans the whole width of the region-body even when the page > > contents are rendered in multiple columns? > > Yes, I think you're right. There are more hints in 6.4.13 (fo:region-body): > the > region-body may be divided into 3 areas: before-float-reference-area, > main-reference-area and footnote-reference-area. The main and footnote areas > are > totally disconnected, and only the former may hold multi-column areas. Thanks! > (I would have preferred that footnotes are allowed to be rendered in columns, > as > the result is nicer, but that's not so). I thought about that, too. But then I thought: How would footnotes be handled when content with span="all" is encountered? In that case, things could get a bit messy. :-) > For the rest I can't help, sorry :-/ No problem. A second opinion was all I needed. Thanks again! Jeremias Maerki
Re: multi-column layout and footnotes
Jeremias Maerki a écrit : Do I interpret 6.10.1.3 correctly that the footnote-reference-area always spans the whole width of the region-body even when the page contents are rendered in multiple columns? Yes, I think you're right. There are more hints in 6.4.13 (fo:region-body): the region-body may be divided into 3 areas: before-float-reference-area, main-reference-area and footnote-reference-area. The main and footnote areas are totally disconnected, and only the former may hold multi-column areas. (I would have preferred that footnotes are allowed to be rendered in columns, as the result is nicer, but that's not so). For the rest I can't help, sorry :-/ Vincent So far I've managed to isolate the last parts from a broken element list that need to be rebroken to do column balancing. For simplicity, I currently simply send the contents after a span change (when content switched from non-spanned to spanned or vice versa) to the next page. Now I have to figure out how to modify the break decisions so they end up balancing the columns. Then I have to figure out the maximum used BPD after the balancing which delivers the available BPD for the next element list, at which point I can remove the hack above that sends the content to the next page. I just hope this breaking-up of the span-reference-areas won't cause too many problems with keeping the footnotes working. I'm a bit worried about that. We'll see. Jeremias Maerki
