Tables

Some of the tables can have a large number of columns. In this case, the table may bleed out of the page. One solution is to use landscape pages for these tables.

Setting the attribute orient = 'land' attribute on the table element will force the table to be on a new landscape page.

Another solution is to use automatic detection of wide tables (5 or more columns):

*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='5'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='6'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='7'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='8'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='9'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='10'] {
  page: landscape-page;
  max-width: 100%;
  max-height: 100%;
  width: 100%;
  page-break-before: avoid;
}

If you want to rotate the entire topic that contains the big table, use:

*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='5'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='6'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='7'],
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='8'], 
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='9'], 
*[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='10'] {
  max-width: 100%;
  table-layout:auto;
}

*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='5']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='6']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='7']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='8']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='9']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='10']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='5']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='6']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='7']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='8']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='9']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='10']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='5']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='6']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='7']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='8']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='9']),
*[class~="topic/topic"]:has(*[class~="topic/body"] > * > * > *[class~="topic/table"][data-cols='10']) {
  page: landscape-page;
}

Slim tables or tables that have many columns make the text from the cells be confined to a small horizontal space. Sometimes this causes long words to bleed outside the cell boundaries.

By default, the built-in CSS automatically activates the hyphenation for the text inside tables as long as your topics have the language specified.

*[class ~= "topic/table"] {
  overflow-wrap: break-word;
}

Tables contained in the output of DITA Map PDF - based on HTML5 & CSS (and DITA PDF - based on HTML5 & CSS) transformations have an automatic layout by default. This means that DITA-OT defines a preferred size on them, optimizing their width/height inside the content to make them as small as possible.

If, for example, you have a two-column table without defined column widths and one column contains images while the other column contains text, the table in the generated PDF will have its first column shrunk with smaller images and an enlarged second column (to occupy the least amount of space in the output).

*[class ~= "topic/image"] {
  max-width: unset;
}

You can center the tables by using margins auto, while the table caption (title) can be centered using the text-align property:

*[class ~= "topic/table"] {
    margin-left:auto;
    margin-right:auto;
    width: 50%;
    border: 1pt solid blue;
}
*[class ~= "topic/table"] *[class ~= "topic/title"]{
    text-align:center;
}

For the DITA Map PDF - based on HTML5 & CSS transformation scenario, the label for a table's title is wrapped in a span element with the class: table--title-label.

<table ... >
...
<caption class="- topic/title title tablecap">
    <span class="table--title-label">Table 
        <span class="table--title-label-number">1. </span></span>
    <span class="table--title">The title of the table</span>
</caption>
...

To hide it, set its display to none:

.table--title-label {
    display:none;
}

For the direct transformation, use:

*[class ~= "topic/table"] > *[class ~= "topic/title"]:before {
    content: none;
}

To create a striped look for your tables, you can use the following CSS rules:

/* Header background and foreground */
*[class ~= "topic/table"][outputclass ~= "stripes"] > *[class ~= "topic/thead"] > *[class ~= "topic/row"]  {
    background-color: blue;
    color:white;
}

/* A default background for the entire table body */
*[class ~= "topic/table"][outputclass ~= "stripes"] > *[class ~= "topic/tbody"] {
    background-color: #eeeeee;
}

/* Color for the stripes */
*[class ~= "topic/table"][outputclass ~= "stripes"] > *[class ~= "topic/tbody"] > *[class ~= "topic/row"]:nth-child(odd) {
    background-color: cyan;
}

/* Border for the cells */
*[class ~= "topic/table"][outputclass ~= "stripes"] *[class ~= "topic/entry"]  {
    border: blue;
}

<table outputclass="stripes">...</table>

If you want to make all tables look the same, you can ignore this attribute and remove the [outputclass ~= "stripes"] simple selector from the above rules.

In DITA CALS tables, you can rotate the content of a cell by setting the @rotate attribute to 1.

In the following example, the Sport, All terrain, and Family header cells are rotated.

<table frame="all" rowsep="1" colsep="1" id="table_d1p_flb_crb">
  <title>Car Features</title>
  <tgroup cols="4">
    <colspec colname="c1" colnum="1" colwidth="14*"/>
    <colspec colname="c2" colnum="2" colwidth="1*" align="center"/>
    <colspec colname="c3" colnum="3" colwidth="1*" align="center"/>
    <colspec colname="c4" colnum="4" colwidth="1*" align="center"/>
    <thead>
      <row>
        <entry morerows="1">Car Name</entry>
        <entry namest="c2" nameend="c4">Features</entry>
      </row>
      <row>
        <entry rotate="1">Sport</entry>
        <entry rotate="1">All terrain</entry>
        <entry rotate="1">Family</entry>
      </row>
    </thead>
    <tbody>
      <row>
        <entry>Tesla Model S</entry>
        <entry>X</entry>
        <entry/>
        <entry>X</entry>
      </row>
...

The resulting output will be:

The built-in CSS matches the cells with this attribute and applies the following properties:

*[class~="topic/entry"][rotate='1'] {
  transform: rotate(270deg);

  /* Avoid wrapping, including hyphenation */
  white-space:pre;
  hyphens:manual;

  /* The rotated content will start from the lower side of the cell */
  vertical-align:bottom;
}

To change the vertical alignment of the content (for example, to move it to the middle of the cell), use the following in your CSS customization:

*[class~="topic/entry"][rotate='1'] {
  vertical-align:middle;
}

The resulting output will be:

To make the text wrap (for instance, the "All terrain" could be split on two lines), you need to inhibit the whitespace preservation from the built-in CSS. In this case, all spaces will create a line break in the rotated layout. Thus, you can add this in your customization:

*[class~="topic/entry"][rotate='1'] {
  vertical-align:middle;
  white-space:normal;
}

The resulting output will be:

*[class~="topic/entry"][rotate='1'] {
  padding-left:2em;
}

To add horizontal lines that separate the options within a <choicetable>, you can use borders set on each of the rows. The following CSS styles the top header and the first column with some background colors. In a choice table, the first column represents the choice labels.

*[class~="task/choptionhd"],
*[class~="task/choptionhd"],
*[class~="task/chdeschd"],
*[class~="task/choption"] {
	background-color: #EEEEEE;	
	text-align: left;
}

*[class~="task/choicetable"] {
	border: 2pt solid #EEEEEE;
}

*[class~="task/choicetable"] *[class~="task/chrow"],
*[class~="task/choicetable"] *[class~="task/chhead"]{
	border-bottom: 2pt solid #EEEEEE;
} 

*[class~="task/choicetable"] *[class~="topic/stentry"] {
	border-bottom: none;
	border-right: none;
}