[scribus] Importing tables

[Gregory Pittman]

On 06/19/2014 08:44 AM, Jean-Paul Gendner wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> hmm isnt http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Create_tables_out_of_csv_data ?
> 
> I do not test this script version; however, it is different from the
> importcsv2table.py.
> 
> +++++++
> The differences for my version:
> - I corrected a bug. When first column width was different from others,
> cells where not juxtaposed properly. Error is in the following line
>   hposition=hposition+cellwidthleft #move the position for the next cell
>   I replaced cellwidthleft by cellsize.
> - I allow specifying a width for each column (only two in original version)
> and a height for each row (only one in original version).
> - The default values for the widths and heights are calculated to get a
> table with the size of the selected frame. If different values are entered,
> the default values are updated to finally respect the overall size. However,
> different values may be entered. Of course, in this case the table size may
> be different from the selected frame.
> - Possibility to affect directly a style to all cells. Style must exist when
> launching the script.
> - Possibility to define a top distance for the texts (distance between top
> of textbox and text).
> 
> 	So much more possibilities are covered: defining width of each
> column and height of each row knowing the overall size of the planed table
> or knowing individual cells values.
> 
> ++++++++
> 	Table cells are normal textboxes, so if a vertically centre function
> exist and the corresponding API is available in the new version, it should
> work. I am eager to see.
> 

Something I always consider is whether a table is the right sort of
structure for a layout. We have become attached to tables since they are
ubiquitous, but often they are visually a distraction. Presumably, the
most important part of a table is its content, not its style and various
colors it might contain.

Look at this wiki page section to see a visual demonstration of this:

http://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/Avoiding_Design_Problems#Lines_and_Text_Example

This is not done with a table of course, but what you see is that at
least in some cases you can strip away the table structure, and open up
the information to be more easily read.

So, in the end, one should always consider that when a table structure
is desired, one alternative is to import CSV to a single text frame with
tabular settings to space the text.

Greg