🚀 go-pugleaf

Hi Nina...

You can change the default "topic" template to modify the formatting of the table formats, or you can add a new table format that include the formatting that you want to use. I'm not sure how you'd get some consistent text in one column .. this could be controlled by a paragraph style that includes autonumber text (or prefix/suffix text). You could also modify the EDD so that a certain cell in a table that uses a specified formatting would add this text. None of this seems like a good approach to me, but I suppose that if this situation is very common, it might be OK. Note that any text added by a template or style, is not really in the XML file .. this is only going to exist for documents rendered through FM (like a PDF).

I think you should probably look into using a conref for this type of situation.

If I may mention a couple of plugins that I've developed, they may be useful for this situation ..

- StructureSnippets .. this plugin lets you define a library of "snippets" of elements that you can easily insert as needed.

- DITA-FMx .. provides a feature called "element templates" to use when creating a new DITA file. You select the template (that you've set up) when creating a new file, and the new file contains the structure.

These are both available from <http://www.leximation.com>

Cheers,

...scott

Scott Prentice
Leximation, Inc.
www.leximation.com