Hi:

I did look at the archive and at all the examples. I am actually
having a hard time  implementing the cals table solution.

Here is what I need to do:
1) I have a table which is in cals table format:

<table>
<tgroup cols="5">
<colspec colname="c1" colwidth="1.35in">
 </colspec>
<colspec colname="c2" colwidth="1in">
 </colspec>
<colspec colname="c3" colwidth="0.75in">
 </colspec>
<colspec colname="c4" colwidth="1in">
 </colspec>
<colspec colname="c5" colwidth="0.9in">
 </colspec>
<tbody>
     <row>
          <entry nameend="4" namest="c3">
                   <text>
                              <para> Text1 </para>
                    </text>
          </entry>
     </row>
</tbody>
</tgroup>
</table>

I need a style sheet (xslt and xslfo) in which
1)the <td> width is set to the colwidth of cals table and
2) I need to know how to handle nameest and nameend on the style
sheet. My understanding is that this defines the col span. Is that a
correct understanding? If so, the "text1" should span two columns.

Implementing a cals table stylesheet is no mean feat, and you seem to
be at the very early stages.  I would get your problem defined first -
do you need to implement the whole of cals or a subset?  Are you
outputting to both XHTML and XSL:FO?  It could be sufficient to use
the Oasis table stylesheets in docbook.

It's a massive task as the cals standard is so loose - its certainly
not something to undertake lightly.  For example, in some
circumstances to correctly work out the row and col spans you need to
normlize the table first - possible but pretty much a nightmare.  I
don't think there's a stylesheet out there that fully implements the
spec.