Re: Balancing Columns

Quoting "W. Eliot Kimber" <eliot@xxxxxxxxxx>:

[...]

> I think you've misunderstood what I mean by "balanced columns". I don't
> mean columns of equal width, but columns in which the composed text is
> of equal depth across the columns, e.g.:
> 
> 
>      xxxxxxxxxxx      xxxxxxxxxx     xxxxxxxxxx
>      xxxxxxxxxxx      xxxxxxxxxx     
> 
> Not:
> 
>      xxxxxxxxxxx      xxxxxxxxxx
>      xxxxxxxxxxx
>      xxxxxxxxxxx
>      xxxxxxxxxxx

Here's a snippet from one of my transformations.  I think something like this 
is what you're looking for.  It outputs a list of items (passed in through the 
tracked-tickers parameter) as columns in a table.


    <!-- Output an HTML table of all tracked stocks.  The table should
         have no more than $tracked-tickers-max-columns columns and at
         least $tracked-tickers-min-rows rows (unless there are fewer
         than that many ticker symbols).  Each ticker symbol is linked
         to its Yahoo quotes page.
         -->
    <xsl:template name="list-tracked-stocks">
        <xsl:param name="tracked-tickers"></xsl:param>
        <!-- $tracked-tickers might contain the ticker-symbol elements
             of track-stock elements or the ticker attributes of stock-info
             elements. -->
        <xsl:variable name="sorted-tickers-rtf">
            <xsl:for-each select="$tracked-tickers">
                <xsl:sort select="string()" data-type="text" order="ascending"/>
                <xsl:variable name="ticker" select="string()"/>
                <!-- need to make sure $ticker is non-empty -->
                <xsl:if test="boolean($ticker)">
                    <!-- need to make sure there are no duplicates in
                         $tracked-tickers -->
                    <xsl:if test="generate-id(.) =
                                  generate-id($tracked-tickers[string()=$ticker]
[1])">
                        <ticker-symbol>
                            <xsl:value-of select="$ticker"/>
                        </ticker-symbol>
                    </xsl:if>
                </xsl:if>
            </xsl:for-each>
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:variable name="sorted-tickers"
                      select="saxon:node-set($sorted-tickers-rtf)"/>
        <xsl:variable name="cell-count"
                      select="count($sorted-tickers/ticker-symbol)"/>
        <!-- $tracked-tickers-max-columns $tracked-tickers-min-rows -->
        <xsl:variable name="row-count-1"
                      select="$cell-count div $tracked-tickers-max-columns"/>
        <xsl:variable name="row-count">
            <xsl:choose>
                <xsl:when test="$row-count-1 &gt; $tracked-tickers-min-rows">
                    <xsl:value-of select="ceiling($row-count-1)"/>
                </xsl:when>
                <xsl:otherwise>
                    <xsl:value-of select="$tracked-tickers-min-rows"/>
                </xsl:otherwise>
            </xsl:choose>
        </xsl:variable>
        <xsl:variable name="column-count"
                      select="ceiling($cell-count div $row-count)"/>
        <table border="0">
            <!-- for $row-number from 1 to $row-count -->
            <xsl:for-each select="$sorted-tickers/ticker-symbol[position()
                                  &lt; ($row-count + 1)]">
                <xsl:variable name="row-number" select="position()"/>
                <tr>
                    <!-- for $column-number from 1 to $column-count -->
                    <xsl:for-each select="$sorted-tickers/ticker-symbol[position
()
                                          &lt; ($column-count + 1)]">
                        <xsl:variable name="column-number"
                                      select="position()"/>
                        <xsl:variable name="this"
                                      select="$sorted-tickers/ticker-symbol
[position() =
                                              ($row-number +
                                              (($column-number - 1)
                                              * $row-count))]"/>
                        <td>
                            <xsl:choose>
                                <xsl:when test="$this">
                                    <xsl:call-template name="make-yahoo-href">
                                        <xsl:with-param name="ticker-symbol"
                                                        select="$this"/>
                                    </xsl:call-template>
                                </xsl:when>
                                <xsl:otherwise>
                                </xsl:otherwise>
                            </xsl:choose>
                            <!-- provide adequate spacing between columns -->
                            <xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>
                            <xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>
                            <xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>
                            <xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>
                            <xsl:text>&#160;</xsl:text>
                        </td>
                    </xsl:for-each>
                </tr>
            </xsl:for-each>
        </table>
    </xsl:template>




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