Automatic column widths on import of XML file

[Lin Sims]

We've an internal perl script that sets up tables at a predefined table
width with the columns at predefined widths, but I'm pretty sure those
measurements are hard-coded into the script that creates the XML file from
the Excel spreadsheet. It's doable if you know what sizes you're working
with before you get started, including how many columns you need included.

XML might let you set column widths as a percentage of page/screen width,
but I don't think that's directly transferable to FM. Can perl handle
calculations?

On Mon, Feb 23, 2015 at 4:26 PM, Scott Prentice <sp14 at leximation.com> wrote:

>  Fei Min...
>
> FM won't auto-adjust table columns in any useful way. The only way I know
> of is to write a script or plugin to analyze the contents of the cells and
> do the width adjustment based on some predefined logic (widest graphic, or
> amount of text, etc.).
>
> Would love to hear I'm wrong .. but hot holding my breath.
>
> ...scott
>
>  On 2/23/15 9:16 AM, Fei Min Lorente wrote:
>
>  Hi folks:
>
>
>
> I found this discussion from 2008:
> https://forums.adobe.com/message/1279946#1279946, and this helpful answer
> from Russ Ward in 2010: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/577820?tstart=0,
> but I don’t see the solution that I’m looking for. My manager (a software
> development guy) would like to create an XML file that I can import into
> FrameMaker that doesn’t specify the width of each column. He’s taking
> output from Jira, and people can create tables in the Description field
> there, but he has no way of knowing how wide the columns are. He figures
> that if HTML can automatically size the columns to suit the contents,
> surely FrameMaker can do this too (I’m not so sure).
>
>
>
> I’ve tried it myself, and the column widths in the table template apply
> when you don’t specify widths in XML. If you have more columns than are in
> your template, it seems to use the width of the last templated column. And
> the tables might contain graphics as well as text.
>
>
>
> Anyone have any better ideas?
>
>
>
> I’m using FrameMaker 10 on Windows 7. I think my manager is using Perl or
> some other scripting language. Jira outputs HTML as well as some other text
> format.
>
>
>
> Fei Min Lorente
>
> Senior Technical Communicator
>
> Medical and Wireless Division
>
> feimin.lorente at onsemi.com
>
> +1 519-884-9696 ext. 2297 | Waterloo office
>
> +1 519-831-4931 | mobile
>
> +1 905-631-5724 | fax
>
> www.onsemi.com
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Lin Sims
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