Rock Sniffer's Scribbles

2023-04 - Ah-ha! (I'd probably worked this out previously, but I haven't been here for a year or so.) The badly-formed bits of table get dumped first as un-formatted text, then the table. I need to force the table wider, and accept sideways scrolling. Does table {width: 200% ; } work? Yes, considerable improvement.]Update the data rows structure too.Done. Publication/ updating date fixed too. There's some unresolved xGML entities in there, but that's minor.

Years ago, when I first started carrying a mobile computer (a Psion 5, still unmatched for convenience, working for several months on a pair of AA cells), I started to keep a database of "bons mots" which I called "Who Said What", because I was fed up of thinking "I recognise that saying, phrase, aphorism or whatever it is, but where did I hear it previously?"

Sadly,that machine has gone the way of the dodo (the screens were always the weak point), and I never did get the emulator to work well enough to get the database out of my backups. So, try again.

I found an old backup, far from up to date (only 280 rows), but the fields I have are : (a nickname) ; author surname ; given name ; publication reference ; date ; the quote itself ; my notes, and whether it is complete. 

Changed theme is allowing more room for the data.

Could I do this as a separate blog, with one entry per entry and a template? I can't get internal linking to work in tr, th or td elements, not even by putting them inside a DIV element.

A little more work done. And my bottle is empty. Maybe a separate blog. But really, this screams to be a database (and one of my remaining reasons to re-implement an Psion emulator to recover from the backups. Which I did test.) so, would that be a GoogleDocs document now? A little more progress. Each time I feel a need to add something, I do a few more rows. It'll get there, or I'll run out first. Meh.

2024, and I'm adding a little bit, including how to link to my other "Penrose" pages. I also want to update the table style, to "fix" the header in the viewing window.

The next problem is how to make the table sortable, in runtime. But that probably means making it a database.

My initial approach is from https://www.w3docs.com/snippets/html/how-to-create-a-table-with-a-fixed-header-and-scrollable-body.html, where the table elements (THEAD, TBODY and TFOOT) are given HEIGHT and WIDTH CSS properties and FIXED and BLOCK properties appropriately ; the BLOCK then generates scrollbars. Then a little adjusting to balance everything nicely.

So ... THEAD and TFOOT should be fixed in position while TBODY is a block with scroll bars. Which they are, now.

This is a specific fix for this page, not something I'll use generally. Well, maybe the THEAD and TFOOT stuff.

Well, it's loading. A big table, and it's taking it's time to render. Sizes look like they need adjustment.
Yes, lots of adjustment. Start off with the widths. At least the headers and TBODY columns are aligning. Add a TFOOT too.

Yes, that is working for the footer. Horrible styling, for now. Overall width? Scrolling? Eventually looks like I'll have to wrap it in the DIV option.

The columns are picking up a fixed width from somewhere. And while the table is reaching version 1 (1000px) , it's not got a horizontal scroll, and it's over-spreading the blog column.

Why don't the THEAD and TBODY elements get the same border styles? Is that amenable to the "item inspector" in the debugger?

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Labels: 2023, 2024, Psion, WhoSaidWhat

# posted by A. Karley FGS, BSc : June 26, 2024