iText 7 - text overlay in a table, how to span over all possible columns

Question

there is a picture visualizing my problem.

enter image description here

I have a table with let's say 5 columns and 5 rows. The first row and first column has a long text. The text won't fit in to the cell but I want to show the entire text in a line, spanning all the following columns. It is not a real colspan as the column-borders should still be visible. So it's more an overlay.

I am experimenting with the example "Fit text in cell" with the custom cell renderer but I don't really understand the different occupied areas, boxes and the dimensions coming with it.

Not to say that the dimension and positioning thing in iText is not really intuitive.

I appreciate any help.

Thanks.

Jeffrey Lionel van Houdt · Answer 1 · 2020-06-16T13:49:17.807

0

So you want something like this ?

C# example

//Create a table with 5 columns
var table = new Table(new float[] { 3,3,3,3,3}).SetWidth(UnitValue.CreatePercentValue(100)).SetFixedLayout(); 
// Creat the cell with the long text
Cell cell = new Cell(1, 5).Add(new Paragraph("Long text that spans over the 5 Columns")); 
//Add the top row 5 cells    
table.AddCell("Column 1 text")
table.AddCell("Column 2 text")
table.AddCell("Column 3 text")
table.AddCell("Column 4 text")
table.AddCell("Column 5 text") 

//Add the long text
table.AddCell(cell);

edited Jun 16 '20 at 13:49

answered Jun 16 '20 at 13:23

Jeffrey Lionel van Houdt

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Hi, no, that is not what I want. That is easy, I know how to span. I want to keep the columns, I just need the text to be drawn over the following columns as you can see in my attached Image. – Sabrina Jun 17 '20 at 16:08
Ah so you want it to ignore the columns. And you want to keep those lines visibile ? – Jeffrey Lionel van Houdt Jun 18 '20 at 11:22
exact! ;) english is not mother tongue – Sabrina Jun 22 '20 at 07:16
it is more like a z-index, the first column contains the text but ignores the limit of the cell but not the limit of the table, reaching the end of the table means line break – Sabrina Jun 22 '20 at 07:18
I don't think this is possible with a built in feature from iText7. You could place a text in front of the table. But it will ignore the rules of the cell/table. – Jeffrey Lionel van Houdt Jun 22 '20 at 10:33
How would I do that? Placing a text in front of the table? – Sabrina Jun 29 '20 at 05:58
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Absolute positioning is probably an option. `Paragraph p = new Paragraph("test");` `p.setFixedPosition(100, 800, 200);` `document.add(p);` – Jeffrey Lionel van Houdt Jun 29 '20 at 15:13

iText 7 - text overlay in a table, how to span over all possible columns

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