[Scribus] tackling tables

[John Culleton]

On Monday 29 October 2007 09:17:37 am Gregory Pittman wrote:
> 1. Something which just occurred to me as we wait for the new tables of
> the future, would be trying to use a script to aid in working with the
> cells of a table.
>
> It would be of some help in this if the default naming of table cells
> could be different from other text frames, perhaps something like
> tableX_Y, where X refers to the table number -- first table would be 1
> -- and the Y refers to the cell within that table. So in a 4 x 5 table,
> table1_20 would refer to the last cell in that table. One could of
> course add more complexity with tableX_Y_Z, where Y and Z refer to row
> and column number.
> A workaround might be to write a small script to rename frames...
>
> The idea of the script would be to first of all locate the table, then
> cell by cell being able to enter contents, alter contents, or skip to
> the next cell. This could also lead to someone customizing the script to
> automatically enter data from a file or database.
>
> Within Scribus proper one can collectively edit font and its features by
> grouping cells. One thing which cannot be done is to collectively edit
> the borders of a cell -- this must be done cell by cell, not very
> convenient.
>
>
> 2. Something else which occurs to me as I write this: why not have the
> box at the top of the Properties window also be a selector, in other
> words, why not be able to scroll through the frames in a Document,
> selecting the frame from the Properties window? Maybe even advance the
> display to the appropriate page if necessary? This could also be an aid
> with Tables, since clicking on the cells is a rather clumsy operation in
> my experience.
>
>
> Greg
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Continuing a previous conversation, there are lots of table creation progams 
associated with TeX. Offhand I can think of the table process built into 
primitive TeX,  the table macros which are part of the texsis package,  a 
latex style or three, an add-on to Context called natural tables and so on. 

All of these are non-wysiwyg as is TeX itself.  So fitting them into the 
Scribus approach is probably unrealistic as a long term solution . But as a 
stopgap for a current project they could be made to work.  For example in a 
LaTeX Scribus window for a ruled table you could insert the following:
------------------------------------------------------------------------
\input TXSruled.tex
 \centeredtables
\bigskip
\ruledtable
Item\dbl Desc|Date |Amount \cr
  1 \dbl \para{Column}| Oct 11 | \$40.00  \cr
  2 \dbl \para{Column}| Oct 25 |\$40.00  \cr
\dbl \multispan2 \hfil TOTAL: | \$80
\endruledtable
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is extracted from an actual invoice that I prepared.  One caveat: 
the user must locate the file TXSruled.tex and put it where LaTeX can find it, 
perhaps in the current directory.    Another caveat: I got  a message saying 
the external program had failed.  So I deleted the above code, updated, and 
then it worked.  I had my lined table on my scribus page. 

This solution is of course a huge kludge. 
-- 
John Culleton