Tables don't work in general

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martonlente

Hello,

I'm using Scribus 1.5.7 on Fedora. I'd like to report table issues, that might have been already asked here on the forum individually several times. However, given the current state of table implementation, I think it'd really make sense to not display, or make unavailable table tools on the UI, as it may confuse several new users, who expect tables to work.

Let me list some of the major table issues:

  • Style Manager has 'Table Styles', that currently do nothing, and is reduntant as-is. You can create new styles, but can't set any options for them (apart from colours, which is confusing).
  • Style Manager has 'Cell Styles', that currently do nothing, and is reduntant as-is (same as for 'Table Styles').
  • Scribus usually ignores Border settings on the Table properties panel – both on the 'table level', when no cells are selected, and also when individual cells are selected. For example, you currently can't create a table with invisible borders.

Please correct me, if the above descriptions aren't right. When searching the forum for table-related issues, I generally see tips for rather not to use tables at all. Given, that in my oppinion Scribus is quite an excellent, and mature tool, hiding table-related features from the UI would really make sense, until they generally don't work. This step would stop making confusions: a missing (work-in-progress) feature, that isn't available yet is much better, than a buggy one. What do you think?

Thanks for considering this!

Kind regards,
Márton Lente

Nermander

As far as I know the 1.5 series is the development version (odd numbers are development, even are stable releases), so it is not surprising that it has some features that do not fully work.

The 1.4 series is the current stable version, the 1.5 series will eventually become the stable 1.6 series.

martonlente

Quote from: Nermander on March 25, 2022, 05:19:10 PM
As far as I know the 1.5 series is the development version (odd numbers are development, even are stable releases), so it is not surprising that it has some features that do not fully work.

The 1.4 series is the current stable version, the 1.5 series will eventually become the stable 1.6 series.
Hello,

Thanks Nermander for the clarification. I wasn't aware of this, as 1.5 series was stable enough when I used it in production several times (table implementation being the only one major exception I was aware of).

I'll look forward to verson 1.6 then: hopefully tables will get sorted out. By then, using tab stops can be a good-enough workaround in many cases.

Flaxx

#3
May I step in here as well, being pretty new in the forum? I like to support the original poster's view on the present table implementation in Scribus - it's the same in my version 1.5.8 .I cannot circumvent the present state by using LibreOfiice Calc and any kind of import it in a pictured format. The results are looking fine (mostly), but...

I'm working on Scribus-templates for a newspaper that should be also readable for people being visually handicapped or even blind using electronic means for printed media (not a problem) or such being able to handle electronic documents in PDF-format. Obviously, the latter is not possible when transferring tables into pure vector formats or even bitmaps. At the moment the mentioned newspaper (for internal use in a NPO, it's a club for aged people) is produced by using MS Word. This work, done each month, is a pure pain in the back and the volunteers doing this are all aged 80+. As I still believe that Scribus could make things much easier (my template is almost done), I would wish to have a better solution, than typing or copying the content of each cell, formatting the text line by line as required and finally the bringing the cell to the required line height.

I know that my version is a moving target and under development and I surely can live with the fact that the default line height (when selecting to change it) is always 1.058 mm. However,  I would be happy if anybody here has hints how to probably change the workflow to get usable results.

I'm using Scibus occasionally, being no professional at all and doing everything on a voluntary base as well.