I have a 6 column layout with textflow and want the columns and text to flow around a box (img) tha spans 4 columns.
The attached img is a PDF created with Prince and it is almost right but the text goes under the img instead of floating around.
Any suggestions? Thanks?

If the image spanned all six columns then it would be easier, as you could place it outside of the column block or use a page float. As it is, I think that it will be rather difficult to make the text flow automatically around the image if it spans across more than one column.

By the way, what mechanism are you using at the moment to place the image? Is it a float, or are you using positioning? We are experimenting with extensions to the float property that will allow more flexible page floats, like this:

img { float: top left }

So we may have a better solution for these kinds of layouts in the future.

I used float after trying different other things. I was hoping to do this without offline layoutprogram (Pagemaker) but it seems I have to go back there.

Your example is a good use case for the proposed 'column-span' property. Prince does not support this, however, and the specification hasn't stabilized yet.

http://www.w3.org/TR/2007/WD-css3-gcpm-20070205/#new-values

-h&kon

First off, great work! Prince is really fantastic.

Controlling column span is a very important, and useful feature. I realize this is an issue of the specs stabilizing, but I am wondering if there has been any movement on this since the last post.

Is there an proprietary extension ('prince-colspan'). If not, is there a recommended workaround.

My apologies if I overlooked an answer to this elsewhere; I have been diligently searching the forum without finding an answer. This post matches my problem pretty much exactly.

Thanks!

Patrick

Sorry, we don't support spanning in multi-column layouts yet. There may be ways to achieve this effect with some combination of floats or positioning, but it would probably be quite fragile.