Conference vaxuum::online_bookbuilding

5.0. "Column-width problem in tables" by TLE::HALL () Thu Sep 15 1988 16:31

I did have one problem that could be a major gotcha.  I'm 
getting a lot of column overflows in my tables.  Many of the 
column breaks will result in very distasteful wrap-arounds, and 
I will have to do something to correct them (e.g., change my 
column widths).  I'd like to avoid doing this because this would
require me either to have two versions of many of my source 
files (one for ONLINE output, one for POST/LN03 output) or to
duplicate and conditionalize the tables (with column-width 
and/or text variations).

It appears that you have increased font size for online display 
but have not increased "column width" calculations proportionally?
It may be that you have not increased things 
proportionally in order to avoid making tables excessively wide.
I think this would occur in very few instances (one?) in my pubs,
and I'd much rather rework those cases than the many tables with
bad breaks.

    Yes, the text font size is 14 points, which is the size that our
    readability studies indicated was most readable on the workstation
    screen. This should not cause many problems in formal tables because
    they are set wider than text, but may cause problems in informal,
    inline tables.
    
    We need to look at this more for books that must be produced in
    both hardcopy and online versions. I haven't done this yet because
    so far we have been using the print font metrics, not the screen
    font metrics to set type, and this has affected output, particularly
    in tables. We are in the process of generating and testing font
    metric files using the screen font metrics, so we should see some
    improvement in tables and can take a look at the problems that remain.
    
    Thanks.
    
    Mary