Tables and their lines i want edit lines what used draw cells in Scribus (i use

Previous topic - Next topic

Jupeku

Tables and their lines i want edit lines what used draw cells in Scribus (i use 1.4.4)?
i dont simply see options what are mentioned here:
http://documentation.scribus.net/index.php/Tables


Jupeku

Addinatiol thing how i can modify text atributes of all cells of sametime?

GarryP

Jupeku, a "table" in Scribus is just a group of text frames that have been automatically created.

To edit any "cell" - or text frame - you need to Ungroup the "cells" and then edit each "cell" individually, you can't modify more than one at a time, unfortunately. (There is a trick for setting the line and colour attributes but not for text.)

Scribus isn't very good at tables yet (as of 1.4.4). I'd recommend creating your own manually - Scribus has some useful align/distribution functions - or importing an SVG/EPG from another application such as Inkscape etc.

I've tried - in my copy of 1.4.4 on OSX - to go through the steps in the wiki article you posted the link to and I can't figure out how to get the options for "Cell Lines" either. I tried many different ways of clicking/double-clicking, ungrouping/grouping etc. and none of the options displayed in the wiki article were visible. I think I've seen them before - quite some time back (1.3.? perhaps)- but I simply can't find them now.

Even double-clicking in a "cell" no longer allows you to edit the text in it without ungrouping the "table". I've a feeling that some functionality has been overlooked/removed during code maintenance, but I could be wrong (it's just how it looks). Also, searching for " table" in the Scribus Manual reveals no relevant documentation.

All in all, I'd suggest making your own tables manually until Scribus can handle them properly.

Jupeku

I tired make this thing using EPS formated tables (i convert spreadsheet to pdf and using inscape pdf->eps) when i added 10 table whole thing is slow. and i know my book going need 81 bg tables (almost whole page sized) at least. and i really mean it!.

utnik

hi jupeku

Quote from: Jupeku on August 27, 2014, 01:09:02 PM...how i can modify text atributes of all cells of sametime?
afaik only when you are working with paragraph styles and/or by ungrouping and linking the text frames.

Quote from: GarryP on August 27, 2014, 02:53:56 PMTo edit any "cell" - or text frame - you need to Ungroup the "cells" and then edit each "cell" individually...
...double-clicking in a "cell" no longer allows you to edit the text in it without ungrouping the "table".
you don't need to ungroup the cells. to select a single cell just hold the 'alt' key while clicking (or while double clicking to edit the text) – that's the way you select a single object from a group in scribus.
if you need to edit the color of multiple cells, you need some hack:

       
  • 'alt' select one cell
  • open the 'colors' tab of the 'properties' window
  • select more cells with 'alt' and 'shift' or the whole table with 'shift' only
  • set your color and shade
tables are really one of the problems in scribus. i don't use them normally, but sometimes you have to...
utnik

GarryP

Ah, ALT+click/double-click does indeed work, thanks for the reminder utnik. It's not exactly self-evident though.

The documentation needs to change to make that clear. I'd do it myself but I don't have a login for that area (it's not part of the normal wiki, and I'm not sure why there are two distinct areas).

However, I'd still recommend creating tables manually: set-up a single cell as needed; then "Multiple Duplicate" to create the grid. Otherwise you still have to set-up each cell separately, which will probably take much longer.

Personally I'd be happy for the table functionality to be removed - or otherwise marked experimental - until it's implemented at least half as well as the rest of Scribus. At the moment it looks - to me - like it's been "tacked on" as an afterthought and isn't anywhere near as polished as the rest of the software.

Quite a few new users have complained - on this forum a least - about the lack of table functionality, and if they view Scribus through the prism of that one function they'll have had a bad experience and may dismiss the whole thing entirely and look elsewhere. And that would be a real shame as we all know how good Scribus is at the stuff it does really well.

While saying that I realise that tables are a staple of DTP software, it's just that the Scribus implementation isn't up to the same standard as the rest of the application and that kind of lets it down.

Users shouldn't have to think of tables as a group of text frames and change how they work to accommodate that. A table should be as distinct an object as an image frame is compared to a text frame. I.e. A table should work as you'd expect a table to work rather than a how a group of text frames works. If you know what I mean.

Anyway, that's the end of my crazy rantings for now. I'm not trying to put Scribus down, it's just that a bad implementation of some basic functionality can make any software look worse than it is and people "vote with their feet", so to speak.

P.S. Hopefully 1.5 will have better table functionality and what I've said above will be moot. Fingers crossed.