PDF Export Style Changes in Confluence 6.7

Question

We always used Custom PDF CSS Styles to make sure tables print nice in PDF Exports. This has been working somewhat okay for a long time using the known workarounds and styles like

table
{
   table-layout: auto !important;
   width: auto !important;
}

However since we upgraded to Confluence 6.7 the PDF Export styles don't work so well anymore. Small-ish columns with relatively short content now all of the sudden get super squeezed to the effect that only 3 or 4 characters are shown per line and other columns use up the majority of the space - whereas previously the columns would still maintain a certain minimum width.

The only workaround I found so far was to set the following style but this is really dodgy and makes some columns (like the numbering column) bigger than they need to be.

table > thead > tr > td,  
table > tbody > tr > td,  
table > tfoot > tr > td,  
table > tr > td  
{  
   min-width: 75px !important;  
}

I would just like to know where the PDF Export Style changes come from and how I can restore the previous behaviour.

Thanks.

Frederik D_ · Answer

Shame. :/

We kind of got it okay now with the following workarounds but not really ideal:

table
{
   table-layout: auto !important;
   width: auto !important;
}

table > thead > tr > td > table,
table > tbody > tr > td > table,
table > tfoot > tr > td > table,
table > tr > td
{
   table-layout: auto !important;
   width: auto !important;
}

/* work-around to make sure that columns like # don't get squeezed too much  */
th
{  
   min-width: 75px !important;  
} 
th.numberingColumn
{
   min-width: 25px !important;  
}

James Richards · Answer

Hi Frederik,

Sadly, no. Looking at the code I can see

//add the class - fixedTableLayout - to a table if the content of table headers is too long to be fit into a page.

So, we're going to either have fixed widths, or what we have in the bug report. There doesn't seem to be a workaround yet that will meet everyone's needs.

Regards, James

Frederik D_ · Answer

Hi James,

Thanks a lot. At least I know now where this is coming from.

Unfortunately adding .fixedTableLayout does not seem to solve the issue. I removed our min-width overrides and added the .fixedTableLayout class to the table overrides (i.e. exactly as it is now described on https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-54275 as a workaround) but I still have the issue that the smaller columns are too small.

Also the issue described in https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONFSERVER-54275 seems to be different to what I described above. Our issue is that when the workaround is applied then the small columns are too small - i.e. the issue is not that the columns are equal width.

Also to add here: our Confluence tables are always using "responsive" layout, not "fixed". Does that make a difference here? Do I need to add .responsiveTableLayout instead then?

Cheers, Frederik