formatting problem

Hello, 

this time I have a question specific to xsl-fo.

I would like to typeset some data consisting of example sentences with interlinear word-by-word translations, as used by linguists. Please view the following example in a fixed-width font to get an idea what I mean:

(1) Dies ist ein langes, über mehrere Zeilen reichendes, schwierig 
    This is  a   long    over several lines  reaching    difficult

    zu setzendes linguistisches Beispiel
    to typeset   linguistic     example

In this kind of example, the original sentence and its translation should be displayed in separate lines one below the other. Across the two lines, each original word and its translation should be vertically aligned. If either the original or the translation do not fit in one line, both should be broken together as shown here.
Can anybody give me some advice how it would be possible to achieve this in xsl-fo? Somehow lining up blocks in a row and letting a rendering program decide where to break the row?
Some kind of table (with invisible borders) might be a solution, but tables don't usually break in such a way, and also FOP apparently cannot calculate column widths automatically, can it?

Thanks for any help,

Lukas

Received on Wednesday, 12 December 2001 09:57:19 UTC