_tables.scss

Style sheet module for the DTBook to PEF script for styling tables.

Use this style sheet by importing it in your custom SCSS style sheet:

@import "http://www.daisy.org/pipeline/modules/braille/dtbook-to-pef/_tables.scss";

The module provides two mixins that correspond with the two main table styles, and one mixin for automatically finding the optimal table layout. It also provides variables for duplicating tables.

table-matrix mixin

Include this mixin to render a table in “matrix” or “grid” format, i.e. with display: table.

table.matrix {
   @include table-matrix;
}

The mixin takes one optional argument, $transpose, to specify the orientation of the table. Possible values are false (default), true or auto. With true the tr elements become the columns of the grid instead of the rows. auto automatically determines the optimal orientation of the table (with least number of rows).

table.matrix {
   @include table-matrix($transpose: auto);
}

table-nested-list mixin

Include this mixin to render a table as a list, the table cells being the list items, grouped into sub-lists by row or column. Table cells are preceded by their associated table headers, avoiding repetitions when possible. The main and sub lists are styled through four placeholder selectors: %outer-list, %outer-list-item, %inner-list and %inner-list-item.

Example:

table.list {
   @include table-nested-list(
      $header-suffix: ": "
   ) {
      %outer-list-item {
         display: block;
         margin-left: 2;
      }
      %inner-list-item {
         display: block;
         margin-left: 2;
         text-indent: -2;
         &:first-child {
            text-indent: -4;
         }
      }
   }
}

The mixin takes three optional arguments.

$transpose is used to specify whether table cells are grouped by row (false, the default) or by column (true), or whether an optimal layout is automatically determined (auto).

With $header-suffix you can specify the text or braille to be inserted after table headers.

$blank-cell-text is the text or braille that is inserted as relacement for empty table cells.

table-optimal mixin

Include this mixin to automatically select the best out of a number of different layouts (two or more). The “best” layout is the one with the lowest cost. The mixin takes as arguments the expressions to compute the costs of the different layouts. The layouts are specified as placeholder selectors %layout1, %layout2, etc.

The following example tries to lay out a table in a grid and falls back to a list if the grid format is not suitable.

table.auto {
   @include table-optimal(
      "(+ (* 10 $forced-break-count) (* .75 $total-height))",  // cost of layout 1
      "$total-height"                                          // cost of layout 2
   )
   &%layout1 {
       @include table-matrix;
   }
   &%layout2 {
       @include table-nested-list {
          ...
       }
   }
}

Note that the placeholder selectors are attached to the outer selector with a & (parent selector).

Parameters that can be used in cost expressions are:

• $forced-break-count: the number of forced line breaks, meaning when a line of text is broken at a character that is not white space and not a valid hyphenation point.
• $total-height: the total height (in number of braille cells) of the table.
• $min-block-width: the width (in number of braille cells) of the narrowest block within the table, typically a table cell.

$duplicate-tables-with-class and $classes-for-table-duplicates variables

Set $duplicate-tables-with-class to duplicate all tables with that class. If the value is the empty string, all tables without a class attribute are duplicated. The $classes-for-table-duplicates variable determines how many copies are made and which classes are added. The value must be a space separated list of class names. As many copies are made as there are items in the list. The first class is added to the first copy, etc. At least two items are required. A . may be used to separate classes if multiple classes need to be added to a single copy.

This feature is useful for trying out different table layouts before deciding which layout to use for which table.

Note that the variables must be set before the @import rule in order to have effect.