[liblouis-liblouisxml] UTDML and tables
- From: Michael Whapples <mwhapples@xxxxxxx>
- To: brailleblaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxx, liblouis-liblouisxml@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 10 Mar 2014 10:18:01 +0000
Hello,
I am thinking do we need to spend time on defining exactly how UTDML
should handle certain types of structure?
Currently liblouisutdml produces UTDML which does not seem to make sense
for a table. Look at the attachments (the table_test.xht is XHTML
produced by Word and Mathtype's "Publish to math page" feature, data in
table purely fictional).
The problem in the output is that the newline nodes appears to place all
cells one above each other, despite there being three columns (the UTDML
output is a single column).
I have been discussing with John Gardner about table handling, it
appears that it would be desirable to have brl nodes inside the table,
rather than a single preformatted block.
One reason is that it will help with synchronised ink and Braille. This
I guess is mostly useful to ViewPlus although may be relevant for
synchronised editor views as well.
The other reason I agree that a table should not have a single
preformatted block of Braille is to help with make the UTDML less page
size specific. If one can determine the content of each cell, then one
can make efforts to layout the cells according to the page size one is
using. This might need a way of line wrapping Braille text.
I can understand the reasoning for the newline xy attribute in the
various table cells in my example (it is to get the indenting of
paragraphs), however as I understand it these are coordinates relative
to the page. May be these should be relative to their container. This
would be quite a conceptual change to UTDML and will break things with
existing software.
So my questions are:
* What do we want to do to correct tables in the short term? There will
be other structures as well we need to deal with.
* When do we want to do a major review of UTDML and alter software to
use a new version of UTDML?
Michael Whapples
For a description of the software, to download it and links to
project pages go to http://www.abilitiessoft.com
Other related posts:
