Hello Heinz

Heinz Wunderli wrote:
> The possibility to create complex tables and to choose precise measures 
> in cm/mm is also very important for some of the jobs i need to do. 
> 
> But I never expected such a feature to work as i desired in a wp for
> less than $100. In this kind of categories, for me, it was Word (running
> on XP), only, that would make the difference. Now I am using Libre Office
> (on OS 10.7) and I am not sure whether the task you described could be
> done with it (I didn t check it out). 
> 
> But in Nisus (less than $100 – so don t expect precision tables!) which
> I use mostly now, I am proceeding exactly like Geoff: Once build your
> reference tables (as good as it gets), save them in a template file, or
> copy/paste them as often as you want to build an identical table …

Well, it depends on how you see it... - If I remember right, this 
setting was possible in the old NisusWriter 6.5.x for OS 9.x. - One of 
the things that made NisusWriter famous was it's possibility of handling 
tables much better than nearly any other text processor.

I don't think it will be all too difficult to implement it into the 
table settings. - Most of the fundamental work is already done - at 
least so I see it... You have the possibility already in the column 
settings when formatting normal text pages in one or more columns. So I 
don't think the final work implementing this possibility will require 
that much...

I've just been checking out the new Apache OpenOffice 3.4, which I like 
bettter than LibreOffice - also because I use only OpenOffice on my 
WinXP Pro, so I'm always sure that any formatting - no matter what type 
- always will be the same.

The AOO doesnot have the possibility of entering values for altering 
rows and columns sizing, but it has a vertical guiding line that occours 
as soon as you draw the column width, so you can see it visually when 
reaching the size of the next/previous column if you have more 
independant tables on the same page. This feature makes it much easier 
to use than NWP's table functionality.

Also, if you are working with smaller tables you can make them in 
Filemaker, select the table and insert it into any text processor 
including NWP. But they are 'fixed' so you can't add new rows and 
columns. - Extra addings must be done in Filemaker... - This method 
isn't good for me since I seldon know how big the table will be....

Right now I'm working in a table which would be more than 10.400 rows in 
two columns. - But that monster of a table is far too much for poor 
NisusWriter Pro.:-) - I made a test before deciding what to do with 
'only' apprx. 5.900 rows = 126 A4 pages... It took apprx. 3 minutes to 
move the one column to match the size I wanted it to be. So I decided to 
make smaller tables of 500 rows each, - and now it takes less than a 
sec. to adjust column width...

I think I'll sit down and put something about this together and send it 
to the Nisus feedback/feature request...

Cheers, Erik Richard


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Erik Richard Sørensen, Member of ADC, <[log in to unmask]>
NisusWriter - The Future In Multilingual Text Processing - www.nisus.com
Openoffice.org - The Modern Productivity Solution - www.openoffice.org
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