I have a problem that I am not sure how to tackle. I need to transform
long sentences into multiple HTML tables for inclusion into a
Microsoft Word document. With short sentences I have no issues, and
the HTML tables are formatted for inclusion in Word without any
problems. But with longer sentences, I have to divvy up the sentence
into fragments. The issue for me is figuring out how to know when to
divide a longer text sentence into multiple tables so each table fits
width-wise in the Word document. Are there ways to calculate width
using XSL other than just string length? The reason I am creating
separate tables is because each of these will ultimately be
interlinearized with morphemes and glosses underneath. Refer to
Leipzig glossing rules
(https://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/pdf/Glossing-Rules.pdf). The problem is
actually much more complex as the glosses in subsequent rows may be
longer than the words themselves, and the glosses align with the start
of each word, but I thought I would start with this initial problem
and see what ideas folks might recommend. I was also wondering if this
is the kind of thing that XSL-FO might be useful for. I have very
limited familiarity with XSL-FO.
I suspect that my easiest course of action is to:
a. pre-determine the left and right margins, indents, etc. for the
Word document and define a style for the example sentences.
b. determine the maximum width of a line based on above.
c. determine the number of m characters (m being the max width
character possible) at a specified font-size that can fit within that
width in (b)
d. use the number in (c) in the XSLT to ensure that sentence fragments
are always shorter than this number of characters.
The above strategy will work most of the time for roman-based
orthographies but I suspect will be an issue for other non-Roman
orthographies. So, another thought: I suppose one could call an
external function fDetermineWrappedText(cell_width, font, font-size,
string) that would populate a table cell and then determine the
portion that wraps, then return that fragment back to the XSLT. The
XSLT could then put that returned fragment into its own table. I found
some suggestions on how to find the line wraps here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3738490/finding-line-wraps. I have
minimal experience using external functions in XSLT but I think this
strategy may be more helpful in the long run.
Simplified source example:
<document>
<sentence>John went to the store.</sentence>
<sentence>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ac et et inceptos eget
sollicitudin, in urna velit et consectetuer eget cras, dictum erat
turpis sed velit donec blandit, integer volutpat at dictum nullam
nunc.</sentence>
</document>
XSLT process.
Output example:
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml";>
<head>
<title></title>
</head>
<body>
<table>
<tr><td>John went to the store.</td></tr>
</table>
<hr/>
<table>
<tr><td>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, ac et et inceptos eget
</td></tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>sollicitudin, in urna velit et consectetuer eget
cras,</td></tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>dictum erat turpis sed velit donec blandit,
integer</td></tr>
</table>
<table>
<tr><td>volutpat at dictum nullam nunc.</td></tr>
</table>
<hr/>
</body>
</html>
Any suggestions in the overall approach to the problem and what you
would do if using XSLT?
Thanks!
Larry
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