Can I force Straddle for table cells in the EDD ?

Question

This is a question for the techies:
In my structured EDD, I have created hazard statements according to the ANSI Z535.6 standard, using a table format - with the table heading showing the hazard category (notice, caution, warning, danger) and the rows showing the individual messages. In the individual messages I have an icon to the left and the message text next to it. Visually, it is better to separate the two cells with a thin line. But in the header there is no icon to the left and I would like to remove the thin line. Yes, I am a perfectionist, I know
Here is what it looks like now:
As far as I can tell, there is no way to tell Frame to suppress the column separator line in the heading without also removing it in the body rows. And if I do remove the line, there is still a thin white line visible, as the heading cells are filled with an image covering its entire area (but that image does not cross over the invisible line, at least not in the PDF). Another option would be to use straddle on the heading cells, but I need to be able to do everything from the structured EDD and paragraph plus table formats. Is there a way to do this ?
Thanks in advance
Jang

Answer 1

Hi Michael,
Oh, well. I had already figured out that this is not an option. I did remove the line between the rows, as it does not add any thing to the clarity of the message panels in my hazard statement table. But FM cannot handle two adjacent cells with graphic frames without adding a single hairline between them, even if I told the program that the border should be None. Something about the importance of frames for FM, I guess. I have only been able to remove the extra unwanted and uncalled-for hairline by straddling the cells (manually). Of course I will have to adapt the EDD to allow straddled cells in the header, but that is peanuts compared to the stuff I have been doing to make this design work in the first place.
As I will have to create a small script to perform a series of necessary steps before a book can be published, and my hazard statement tables all have the exact same small problem, I will probably include a script that goes through the whole book and applies a straddle to any cells in the heading row of any hazard table. Being a perfectionist, writing that script before handing my stuff over to my customer will make me happier than not doing it and saving some time by delivering a solution that does not make me perfectly happy.
When all the hard work for my current projects is done, I will try to publish an article on how to implement ANSI Z535 compliant hazard statements in structured FM documents. Might be useful for others, too. I will show you my solution at the tcworld fair, if you have some time for that.
Ciao
Jang