Arbortext Editor provides a set of tools for inserting, displaying, and editing tables.

The following terms are used when referring to Arbortext tables:

Borders are the graphical lines that surround both the table itself and each individual cell. The borders between cells are shared. You can use the Modify Borders dialog box to control how borders are displayed. In the dialog box, you can change borders for either the entire table, a selected set of cells, or an individual cell.

For OASIS Exchange, HTML, and custom tables, you can change the style, color, and width of the borders. These changes are saved as processing instructions, which are typically not compatible with other XML editors. Use the set tableuiextensions command to prevent format settings from being saved as processing instructions.

For Arbortext tables, you can change the style of the borders.

For tables that span page boundaries, header rows print at the top of each page and footer rows print at the bottom of each page. Text in header rows is automatically converted to bold.

According to the OASIS Exchange and HTML table models, header rows must be at the top of the table and footer rows must occur directly after them. When you convert body rows to header or footer rows, they will be moved to the top of the table and placed with the other header and footer rows.

The CALS tfoot element is not a part of the OASIS Exchange specification. If you are planning on using your documents in a strict OASIS Exchange environment, you should not use footer rows in your tables.

In HTML tables, when you convert a body row to a header or footer row, the content of the row is automatically moved from within the tbody element to within the thead or tfoot element, respectively. If you prefer to change the table data cell element (td) to a table header cell element (th), choose Edit > Change Markup.

The Arbortext table model and custom tables allow only one header row; footer rows are not available.

If working with the OASIS Exchange table model, you can specify that cell content be rotated by 90, 180 or 270 degrees. Use the rotate attribute for a cell, with values of 1, 2 or 3 to achieve rotation.

Horizontal and vertical alignment settings made for table cells will align the text in the cell, regardless of any rotation.

Tables have two widths:

Column widths in the Editor view can be either proportional, based on the overall table width, or fixed, based on the Size setting in the Table Properties dialog box. The available fixed width units are: inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, and pixels.

Column width in published output is controlled by the column width defined in your stylesheet.

In OASIS Exchange tables, each column can be specified in different units of measure, resulting in tables that can contain a mixture of fixed width columns and proportional width columns.

HTML tables also allow a mixture of proportional width columns (percentage) and fixed width columns (pixels).

Row height is set to Natural by default. The height of each row will adjust to fit the content in the tallest cell. You can set a Fixed height for a row that will cause the row to appear at a specific height in published output. In the Editor window, fixed height rows are indicated by a two headed arrow in the row ruler that indicates the height of the row. If a row's natural height becomes greater than the specified Fixed height in the Editor window, the row will grow beyond the fixed height but the arrow in the row ruler turns red and continues to indicate the fixed height. Note that this does not necessarily mean that the content of the row will exceed the fixed height when the table is published. It just means that the content is too long for the row height in the Editor window.

In OASIS Exchange tables, fixed row heights are saved as processing instructions, which are typically not compatible with other XML editors. Use the set tableuiextensions command to prevent format settings from being saved as processing instructions.

In custom tables, the row height is Natural and cannot be changed.

Tables can be displayed in either tagged or graphical view. The View > Tables > Table Markup menu option controls this view. When tables are viewed as markup, you can edit the individual table tags directly. With the table markup turned off, tables are displayed graphically and you can edit the cell content and table structure more easily.

Arbortext Editor supports three pre-defined table models for authoring in the Arbortext Editor table editor. These include an Arbortext table model, and two table models based on industry standards: HTML and OASIS Exchange (derived from the CALS standard).

If you are using a DTD, the entity declarations that define the pre-defined table models are located in the \entities folder of your installation directory. The entities are listed in the following table. The Model Name column lists the table model that works with the declaration file.

Arbortext Editor supports the display and editing of custom tables defined from elements in a DTD or schema. A custom table model can be configured by identifying elements in a document type that should be displayed and edited as a table. The elements can be output as a table or styled in another format.

As an example, a content model such as:

could be configured as a custom table where <list> is the table element, <listitem> is the row element, and <para> is the cell element.

Custom tables are configured in the document type configuration file, .dcf file, or Arbortext Styler stylesheet. See Defining custom tables for more information on defining a custom table in the .dcf file. For information on configuring a custom table with Arbortext Styler, see Styling custom tables.

Arbortext Editor supports the use of multiple table models in a document. However, all of the table models you want to support must be declared in your DTD or schema.

If you have multiple table models declared in your DTD or schema, you can configure Arbortext Editor to display a prompt that enables users to select the table model they want to insert. Arbortext Editor displays this prompt when the set prompttablemodels command is set to on.