Subject: Re: How to use the new latex style tables.
rms@greymalkin.yi.org
Date: Tue May 01 2001 - 11:56:45 CDT
Martin...
Thanks for the detailed info!
A big hug,
rms
On Wed, May 02, 2001 at 12:44:34AM +1000, Martin Sevior wrote:
>
> HI everyone
> Here is a short description of how to build latex style tables.
>
> This is baed on two new features.
>
> 1. Tab_bar. These are vertical lines than span the height of a line at a
> left justified tab stop.
>
> 2. topline and bottomline text decorations. These are lines that run along
> the top or bottom of a line of text, field or tab run.
>
> 3. Set up a table like this:
>
> A. Click on the top ruler at approximately the positions you want the
> vertical lines of you table to go. This creates left-justified tabstops.
>
> B. Open the tab dialog and change these left-tab's to tab_bars. Rember to
> press "apply" when you're done.
>
> C. Now press "tab" to populate the tab bars. You will see a set of
> vertical lines appear at the tab stops.
>
> D. After the last tab-stop press <shift>-return to insert a line-break. If
> you press return, you start a new paragraph and won't be able to adjust
> all the tabstops on each line simultanously.
>
> E. Now copy the previous line to the current line and repeat for as many
> lines as you want in your table.
>
> F. Now use the topline and bottomline decorations to fill in horizontal
> lines whereever you want them. These are available as buttons on the
> "extras" toolbar and from the Format menu.
>
> G. If you want to have text that spans more than one column just type it
> in across the offending tabstop and it will disappear. Bingo, a
> multi-column entry.
>
> H. If you you want to ajust the horizontal spacing of the columns simply
> grab the tab stop on the top ruler and drag it to the new position.
>
> I. Of course multi row entries are made by just erasing the horizontal
> lines (like turning off underlining).
>
> J. If you want text centered in a column, you have to insert a
> center-justified tab in the colum you want. You'll also have to insert
> another "tab" in every row with the center tabstop otherwise the table
> will look really weird.
>
> K. If people think it worthwhile it would not be too hard to invent a
> latex-table editting mode in fv_View. Once in this mode, pressing "return"
> in a column would automatically insert another row in the table and move
> the cursor down one line. ie It would fake the behaviour of full table
> support.
>
> I think these latex-style tables will continue to be useful even after
> we get full table support (which allows paragraphs and images in each
> defined cell).
>
> I find them easy to use and more intuitive than the MS table editor. Of
> course since they're like Latex tables which I know well I may be quite
> biased.
>
> I would be very interested to know how MS Word power users like Randy,
> find these.
>
> Cheers!
>
> Martin
>
>
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