[xep-support] Re: Span columns in two-column format?

[G. Ken Holman]

At 2010-12-13 21:04 +0100, Anders Svensson wrote:
>Does xep still not support span="all" on nested blocks (i.e. only on blocks
>that are direct children of fo:flow)?

That is not an XEP constraint ... it is an XSL-FO constraint:

    7.21.4 "span"
    This only has effect on areas returned by a flow; e.g. block-areas
    generated by fo:block children of an fo:flow.

If XEP broke that constraint then stylesheets would not be portable 
to other conforming XSL-FO processors.

>I'm using DITA, and I don't see how I
>will be able to use e.g. pagewide images and tables if I can't span nested
>blocks.

If you are writing the stylesheet then you'll be able to detect 
this.  If you are using something like the Open Toolkit, then you are 
stuck with what the toolkit gives you.  My DITA customers have had me 
write XSL-FO stylesheets from scratch rather than use the toolkit.

>I find it hard to see how rx:flow-section would solve it either,
>since apparently that has to be a direct child of fo:flow too. I would have
>to chop up the DITA styling in an impossibly complicated way with separate
>rx:flow-sections...
>
>So is there no way to use e.g. pagewide images and tables in a 2-column
>format with xep? If there isn't that would be a real show stopper for the
>2-column format for me, because almost all manuals require pagewide images
>in my experience. So I'm really just hoping someone will tell me there's
>some feature I've missed that makes this possible. Is there?

This isn't a processor issue and it isn't a specification 
issue.  Write your stylesheet so that you can accommodate a spanned 
image as required by the specification when you encounter it in your 
data.  I'm not sure where outside of your stylesheet the problem is 
that you need solved.

I hope this is helpful, though I recognize it isn't giving you what 
you ask for.

. . . . . . . . . . Ken


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