[reportlab-users] Re: Formatting long tables

[Henning von Bargen]

> From: Robin Becker <robin@reportlab.com>
> Subject: Re: [reportlab-users] RE: Formatting long tables
> Reply-To: reportlab-users@reportlab.com
> 
> I'm looking at your original algorithm and it seems quite workable, but
> the sample size of rows used to compute the widths is determined by the
> available height (ie you consider rows in the first fit tranche). 

Is it? Actually I didn't quite understand the current calc() function
really.

> That makes things a little hard in terms of description.

Indeed.

> 
> If I understand the intent of your second proposal we take a fixed
> sample of rows to do the estimation. That seems better in that we can
> give the user control of that number so they can  use the first n1 rows
> plus some n2 other random rows to estimate the width. This method also
> makes things independent of the available height for the first tranche.
> 
> That's a feasible way to do table sizing provided we have a backup when
> things go wrong.

I hope that the new algorithm could be easier to describe and understand.
It could perhaps be a LongTable class different from Table.
(LaTeX also has different table styles).

Henning

> -- 
> Robin Becker
>