[scribus] Tables in 1.5.6svn

[John Jason Jordan]

On Tue, 7 Jan 2020 18:14:16 +0100
Silvain Dupertuis <silvain-dupertuis at bluewin.ch> dijo:

>I did make documents with tables, but as somebody suggested,
>I did them with LibreOffice, exported them in PDF and linked the PDF
>in an image box in Scribus.
>It is quite easy to do, we have all the facilities of LO for tables
>and their layouts. Any edit can be made with LO, rexported as PDF, and
>we do not need to do anything in Scribus. The content is automatically
>updated to the updated PDF content.

First, I use a LOT of tables in my documents, so I was really happy to
see that they were finally available in 1.5.6svn. Now my hopes are
dashed. :(

For a long time I created my tables in LO Writer, exported as PDF, and
placed them in Scribus as suggested above. I still have many of the PDF
files littering my hard drive. Sometimes I would fake a table with tabs
if I didn't need lines. Once I spent hours trying to create a table in a
render frame with Latex, before finally giving up. The learning curve
for Latex is massive and very non-intuitive. I do have to say, however,
that with Latex you can create internal lines that don't quite connect
where they intersect, a kind of cool appearance.

I wish we could just steal ... er, borrow the table code from TeX or LO
and put it into a special frame utility, like a popup window. Or if we
have to keep making our tables in LO, make LO text import recognize
the table feature so you can copy and paste instead of having to
export as a PDF. E.g., if you copy the table in LO and then paste it
into Scribus now you get just the text. But that may be as much work as
creating a native Scribus table feature.

Maybe someone who is Latex-literate could create several dozen tables
with code as needed to create the table in a render frame, along with a
graphical view of what the render frame will loo like. Click on the
graphical view and the code is automatically pasted into the render
frame. I imagine that this would be scriptable. All the user would need
to do is add or subtract for more or fewer rows and columns. Even a
dummy like me might be able create tables in a render frame if the
majority of the code is already done and all I have to is ad/subtract.
I know a lot of local TeX/LatexL/Lyx gurus who I might be able to
inveigle into helping. I wouldn't mind helping to coordinate such a
project.