Spanning table columns in Local Front Matter (USFM 2 project)

Question

I need to "span cells" in a table row, as specified in the USFM 3.0 spec document:

Example from the USFM doc:

\tr \tc1 Zebulun \tc2 Eliab son of Helon \tcr3 57,400
\tr \tcr1-2 Total: \tcr3 186,400

which formats as

This isn't working in my Local Front Matter file, on a PT project with USFM 2 encoding.

My question is, will PTXprint generate this spanned column format on a PT project with USFM 3 encoding? If so I might be able to persuade the owners of this project to convert to USFM 3, but it's not worth the bother if PTXprint has not implemented this particular feature of Tables.

An overlapping question is: Can PTXprint handle a project conversion like this in mid-formatting or might it break some of my completed text-fitting work? Maybe I should just generate these Front Matter pages separately and insert them into my current publication? Or... can PTXprint be coaxed to span Table cells in the Local Front Matter file independent of the USFM encoding of a project?

Answer 1

Sorry, the feature isn't implemented. I didn't even know it was in USFM3.0, actually. That particular example, of course, is only necessary in terms of cell 1 being empty, but presumably it is supposed to fill to the combined width. That's not going to be easy to implement, given how the code tries to divide up space, so, urm, don't hold your breath.

 Otherwise... So far we don't distinguish between USFM versions, but try to support everything. (caveat... make that everything which we think is reasonable/possible). Eventually we'll have to start distinguishing between USFM3 and USFM3.1, as the nesting rules differ.

Comments

Yeah, I thought that might be the case. Thanks for explaining. I will ask a new question about my original problem of lining up two tables, which I thought to solve by merging OT and NT book names table and adding a "New Testament Book Names" title between the sections. This title needs to span columns.