Let's talk pPr

  • Article

Look, I know that many of you have been messing with WordProcessingML (WordML) since beta, but I have not. I just didn’t have time. I needed to figure out smart document technology (see this article on smart docs: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dnofftalk/html/office09042003.asp) and other things.

Now that I am into it, I am loving it more and more. I started with a really simple stylesheet to produce a word doc from a custom XML file, and now I am adding more sophisticated formatting to the document. This requires the powerful, the mighty, the underappreciated pPr element! The pPr element lets you define the properties for a paragraph. I’ll show some basic examples to keep it clear. Per esempio, if you want to have some text in a paragraph that will be Heading 3 style, then put it in the pPr. Here is part of my stylesheet with this instruction:

<xsl:template match="SummaryInfo">

   <w:p><w:pPr><w:pStyle w:val="Heading3"/></w:pPr>

      <w:r>

        <w:t>

           <xsl:value-of select="."/>

        </w:t>

     </w:r>

   </w:p>      

</xsl:template>

This is a really simple example, but what if I wanted to make things a little more interesting? [and, I do]. Here, I change the font color for some text:

<w:rPr>

      <w:b w:val="off"/>

      <w:color w:val="3366FF"/>

</w:rPr>

<w:t> (Percent Complete= <xsl:value-of select="@PercentComplete"/>)</w:t>

 

In my next entry, I am going to spill some of the details on how I gen some tables with borders, shading, and more.

Rock on!

(BTW: In case anyone is wondering, I am not putting band names in my blog as a thinly veiled attempt to increase the findability of my blog- I just love rock and roll and can’t resist linking it to my work. I usually am listening to great tunes when writing: Today is Jet- Get Born. Really solid, right to the roots rock and roll! Yeah.)