Newbie question - underlining blank spaces.

[Jack Donohue <do...@synovation.com>]

Hi all.

Is there any way to force FOP to underline a string, even if it is composed
entirely of blank characters? I'm using fop-0.20.3, if that matters.


I have a template which produces an underlined, fixed-length string in my
pdf doc. It pads the string with spaces if necessary to make it the desired
length. It works great, and a I get a padded string in the pdf document with
the required length and everything is underlined. Great :-)


The problem is when the string is composed entirely of blank spaces ... The
string has the correct number of blank characters
(white-space-collapse=false), but the string is not underlined.


Is there a way to force FOP to underline a string, even if it is composed
entirely of blank characters? 


Thanks for any help.



Here is the template:


  <!-- *** this is the format I want to use to display the string -->
  <xsl:attribute-set name="dataText">
    <xsl:attribute name="font-family">Courier</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="font-size">9pt</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="font-style">normal</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="font-weight">normal</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="language">en-US</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="text-decoration">underline</xsl:attribute>
    <xsl:attribute name="white-space-collapse">false</xsl:attribute>
  </xsl:attribute-set>






  <!-- recursive template to pad a string with blanks -->
  <xsl:template name="append-pad">
    <!-- the value with whatever padChar is passed in   -->
    <xsl:param name="padChar"><xsl:value-of select="' '"/></xsl:param>
    <xsl:param name="padVar"/>
    <xsl:param name="length"/>
    <xsl:choose>

      <!-- **** check here to see if the padVar is nil -->

      <xsl:when test="boolean($padVar)">
	<xsl:choose>
	  <xsl:when test="string-length($padVar) &lt; $length">
	    <xsl:call-template name="append-pad">
	      <xsl:with-param name="padChar" select="$padChar"/>
	      <xsl:with-param name="padVar"
select="concat($padVar,$padChar)"/>
	      <xsl:with-param name="length" select="$length"/>
	    </xsl:call-template>
	  </xsl:when>
	  <xsl:otherwise><fo:inline
xsl:use-attribute-sets="dataText"><xsl:value-of
select="concat(substring($padVar,1,$length),'&#160;')"/></fo:inline></xsl:ot
herwise>
	</xsl:choose>
      </xsl:when>


      <!-- *** if the padVar is nil, make a string of entirely blank space
*** -->

      <xsl:otherwise>
	<xsl:call-template name="append-pad">
	  <xsl:with-param name="padChar" select="$padChar"/>
	  <xsl:with-param name="padVar" select="'&#160;'"/>
	  <xsl:with-param name="length" select="$length"/>
	</xsl:call-template>
      </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>





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Jack Donohue, Developer
Synovation Incorporated.
Providing integrated solutions for criminal justice.
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Re: Newbie question - underlining blank spaces.

["J.Pietschmann" <j3...@yahoo.de>]

Jack Donohue wrote:
> Is there any way to force FOP to underline a string, even if it is composed
> entirely of blank characters? I'm using fop-0.20.3, if that matters.

Try something which results in
   <fo:inline text-decoration="underline">&#x005F;                   &#160;</fo:inline>
The first is the underline character, the last a non breaking
space.

J.Pietschmann