RE: Anchoring text to bottom of page

Ken, David:

Thank you both for your help and discussion. Ken, as I do not have any other
footer information to include in my document, I thought it would be fine to
try your suggestion, and indeed it worked! The only slight issue is that if
the content does run to a second page, I don't necessarily want XYZ to
appear at the bottom of page 2, it should perhaps just go after whatever
text runs onto page 2. This is not definite yet, so I'll stick to this
solution for the moment.

Thanks again,

Haitham.

-----Original Message-----
From: G. Ken Holman [mailto:gkholman@cranesoftwrights.com]
Sent: 29 July 2002 20:59
To: www-xsl-fo@w3.org
Subject: Re: Anchoring text to bottom of page



Thank you, David, for your observations,

At 2002-07-30 00:37 +0500, David Tolpin wrote:
> > Remember that XSL-FO is a layout language and if there is a layout
> > construct giving you what you want, then ignore what the name of the
> > construct is and use it to do what you need.
>
>It would be really nice if it were so.  It is not, unfortunately. XSL FO
>is a mix of lower-level layout elements, presentation elements which have
>more or less fixed layout role, as well as of higher-level elements
describing
>a document's structure.

Yes, but when there isn't a conflict I personally have no qualms using what 
gives me the end result.

>While your advice is absolutely right for tables or lists -- data put in 
>tables
>is not necessary tabular data -- it is less safe to use footnotes for 
>positioning
>signatures and disclaimers, unless the signatures and disclaimers ARE 
>footnotes
>indeed.

I agree that if the user also has footnotes, this technique can have some 
ambiguity (but in both cases I believe it has only been on the last page).

>An alternative approach would be to omit the notion of footnote completely 
>and introduce
>'bottom-floats' along with 'top-' and 'side-' floats.

Oh, I totally agree, but without such a distinction in XSL-FO 1.0, a 
document without footnotes can use footnotes as bottom-floats.

>table-caption, footnote, title are structural elements. They should be 
>used in accordance
>with their meaning;

I'm not yet swayed ...

>a somewhat exaggerated example of importance of such use is a speech-based
>XSL FO browser; it would interpret this elements according to their 
>intended roles and would be
>confused.

Ah ... good point.

>While an XSL FO reader is mostly a theoretical issue, an XSL FO browser 
>for PDAs
>or other special devices may interpret these constructs in a semantically 
>reasonable but
>rather unexpected way.

Granted.

>Besides that, use of footnote as a bottom-float breaks extensibility and 
>forward-compatibility:
>unexpected effects can eventually be discovered when bottom-floats are 
>indeed included in the language.

No doubt, but I was assuming the user doesn't need footnotes.

> > If you had meant the bottom of every page, check the use of
static-content
> > for a footer.

This comment addressed an ambiguity in the poster's question regarding 
confusion I had about which pages he was talking about.

>Isn't specifying a different page-master for the last page and static
content
>just for that page  a better solution?

I discounted that approach because of the fixed extent of the region-after.

As with many posts to these lists where users who don't know the 
capabilities don't know how many of their requirements to reveal in their 
questions, I was trying to propose a solution that handles an arbitrary 
amount of content to be dropped to the bottom of the last page.

Thanks, David, for bringing these issues to light!

............. Ken


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Received on Tuesday, 30 July 2002 06:34:18 UTC