Table Cell Properties
The majority of formatting properties and behavior can be set for table cells, if necessary overriding properties set on the table, column, or row.
• Cell alignment
Table cell alignment properties override the settings made for the column.
◦ fTableCell.horizontalAlign — Horizontal alignment of a cell or its contents
Cells can be left or right aligned, centered, or justified.
If the table cell contains a block or a paragraph, the horizontal alignment can be set on those objects.
◦ fTableCell.verticalAlign — Vertical alignment of text content in a cell
Content can be aligned to the top, middle, or bottom of the cell.
• Borders and rules
Each table cell can have its own set of up to 20 border rules.
It is not desirable to display both the bottom and top rules of adjacent cells (or the left and right rules) as the rule will be twice as thick as required. PTC Arbortext Layout Developer provides the option to test the row and column position of the current cell in the table being formatted and apply rules conditionally. This provides a greater level of detail for the table than testing the hierarchical position of the cell in the content.
Table cell rules are applied in addition to the table’s border rules. Cell rules take up space on the inside of the cell, pushing content inwards. They do not appear by default in the column gutters. The cell properties fTableCell.ruleLeftGutter and fTableCell.ruleRightGutter span rules into the gutter.
As a default, rules applied to the top and bottom edges of a table cell are as wide as the column. It is possible to draw cell rules to the width of the content in the column:
◦ Rule is the width of the last line in the cell
◦ Rule is the width of the longest line in the cell
◦ Rule is the width of the rule in the previous row
This is the hash width rules feature, and is specified with the fTableCell.ruleHashWidth property. The fTableCell.RuleHashWidths constant lists the values of the property:
If you are using the sub column alignment feature (see
Table Column Properties), rules can be drawn between the different alignment points.
• Padding
As with rules, padding is applied inside the cell and inside the rules area. Padding can be applied to edges individually or concurrently.
• Background color
Table cells can take a background color defined with the fTableCell.backgroundColor property. This setting can be used to provide row colors as PTC Arbortext Layout Developer does not provide row background colors.
As with rules, background colors can be applied conditionally to output different colors under different cell and row conditions.
Background colors stop, by default, at the cell border. Use the fTableCell.backgroundSpan property to permit background colors to span into table gutters.
• Spans
Table cells can span both rows and columns:
◦ The fTableCell.spanRows property is used to specify the number of rows a cell should span
◦ The fTableCell.spanColumnsNum property is used to specify the number of columns a cell should span
◦ Parameters for the table cell start command formatting.tableCellStart() specify the number (or name) of the columns in which a cell is to start and end.
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If a table cell is set to span rows or columns, the cells it replaces should not be started. This generates badly formatted tables.
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• Minimum height
You can define a row’s minimum height by setting the fTableCell.minimumHeight property for the cells in the row.
Arbortext Styler permits a minimum height setting for a row.
• Keeps
If a table row is allowed to break mid-row, the table cell may be split. Use the fTableCell.keepTogether property to keep the individual cells together and prevent that mid-row split applying to the current cell.
