[scribus] How to get cool tables in Scribus. Yes!

[John Jason Jordan]

On Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:20:45 +0200
Christoph Schäfer <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de> dijo:

> Am Mittwoch, 15. April 2009 00:34:49 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> > On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:19:38 +0200
> > > Copy your Writer table into Calc and use Calc for the final formatting.
> > > Then copy the columns and rows of your table to the clipboard. Open a new
> > > Draw document, use Ctrl+Shift+V and select "GDI Metafile" in the dialog.
> > > Then export the selection to EPS. Unless your gs is badly configured, the
> > > resulting EPS will be imported flawlessly into Scribus.
> >
> > I didn't try Calc at all because I'm pretty sure that in Calc you can't
> > use all the formatting options for tables that you can in Writer.
> 
> Perhaps that's your problem. Why don't you just _try_ Calc instead 
> of "being "pretty sure" without any knowledge=

OK, since you want me to, I did so.

The first thing I discovered is that the table had to be completely
reformatted. Pasting into Calc lost all the formatting that I had
created in the Writer document. So copying and pasting from Writer is a
bad idea.

Next I decided to go ahead and reformat the table in Calc to see if I
could produce the same effects in Calc. That worked acceptably. So far
it appears that if one creates the table originally in Calc you can
achieve the same table quality as if you create it in Writer. Mind you,
this was just one relatively simple table. 

Then I copied and pasted as you suggested into Draw. Sadly, the
formatting of text in Calc came out messed up. The messed up part was
text that was rotated 270 degrees in the header row. I'm guessing this
is an OOo bug. It wasn't badly messed up, but badly enough that it
wasn't acceptable.

> > Tables in Writer were made to be design elements more than places for
> > sorting and calculating. If you can format to the extent you need to in
> > Calc, then Christoph's suggestion is another option.
> 
> When was the last time you worked with a spreadsheet program?

Winter term at the university. But I didn't have to print the results.
Otherwise, maybe a few times a year. I do writing and layout. Why would
it occur to me to use Calc?

> Hmm, perhaps you know even more complicated ways to do this ;)

If you create only tables in OOo and you do them de novo in Calc, and
you don't need stuff like rotated text, Calc may work. I'd rather just
do them in Writer and take an extra step to get them into Scribus. It
works and I can count on it.

But it's good to have this discussion. Others can see the pros and cons
and decide what works best for them.