VF Table align/valign bug

When using valign and align on a <TD> table cell, the formatter converts center and middle wrong, thus failing our XHTML validation. For example:

<td align='center'> becomes <td align='middle'>
<td valign='middle' becomes <td valign='center'>

Both of these conversions are wrong according to the html spec (http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/tables.html#alignment). Is there an easy way to correct this via config?

VisualFormat 2,6,0,7
Teamsite 5.5.2

Edited by javac on 10/21/04 05:46 AM (server time).

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OliStreek

I've never really investigated how to change behaviour like this in the Visual Format configuration. I make changes to the table HTML that Visual Format generates by processing it in the tpl. This approach might be an unnecessarily complicated way to solve your particular problem - there could well be a simple configuration option - but this will work if you can’t find it.

First, I have a sub defined in a custom common code library that’s included by all templates. Let’s call this sub ‘formatVFhtml’. Then I reference my common code library in all my tpls, with this line near the top of the tpl:
use CUSTOM::tplCommon

In your formatVFhtml sub, you put some regsubs that replace all instances of <td align='center'> with <td align='middle'> and <td valign='middle' with <td valign='center'. Then just return the result in a string.

Then, in your tpl, instead of just including the VF generated code, you include the result of passing the VF code to your formatVFhtml sub, for example:
if (iwpt_dcr_value('dcr.Description')) {
$description = iwpt_dcr_value('dcr.Description');
chomp $description;
$description = CUSTOM::tplCommon::formatVFhtml($description);
}

So while your DCR will always have the invalid HTML code in it, the tpl will just change it and write out correct html. This approach allows you to make very complicated changes to the code generated by Visual Format, for example, I change all the borders and shading of our tables in the formatVFhml function.

I hope this is all clear, let me know if it isn’t and I’ll send some more detailed code.

-- Oli

Hans

This approach sounds good. We are also doing some data cleanup in the PT.

We have a FormAPI script attached to our DCTs that will clean up as much as possible right in the DCR. The presentation template will not have to do the work each time the page generates. Javascript regex support is not as good as Perl but it still does some of the cleanup. Whatever we can't fix in the DCT, we do in the PT (often easier in Perl anyway).

So, in your DCT, you can register an onItemChagne event to your VF field and the script will fire whenever a user adds any data. I can't guarantee however that the stupid VF bar won't change some stuff right back like the valign="center".

Hans

javac

Thanks Oli, I started looking into just cleaning it up with the TPL and it looks like that's definitely the way to go. It doesn't appear that Ektron even recognizes this as a bug unless it's been fixed in one of the most recent releases.