[reportlab-users] Automatic column spacing in nested tables?

[Robin Becker]

Dinu Gherman wrote:

> Hi,

> 

> I'm just doing some fundamental table testing and wonder if the auto-

> matic column width calculation I'm observing for nested tables does

> the right thing?

> 

> In the lower table of the attached sample I see too much white space

> on the right side of the cells. Apparently, the table seems to fill

> the whole frame width (minus some padding) in the document. But in

> the upper table this is ok, though.

> 

> Regards,

......

There have been many discussions on this subject before. Many flowables have no 
natural width so our simple algorithm effectively gives up; I believe it is 
slightly cleverer than before and doesn't crash out with tables in tables so often.

Conceivably a Table could pursue a depth first strategy to completion, but if 
the lower level flowables contain a paragraph which is naturally unsized then no 
benefit will be obtained over the myopic algorithm if the size propagates outwards.

Someone contributed patches to make the distribution of unsizedness more fair, 
but without a notion of goodness for the whole (outer) table there's no right 
way to do this. I guess that Dinu would prefer the extra space in his example to 
be removed in this particular case. That might be possible, but I'm not holding 
my breath.
-- 
Robin Becker