View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017208 | Scribus | Tables | public | 2024-05-03 02:46 | 2024-10-13 16:02 |
| Reporter | VladVladson | Assigned To | |||
| Priority | normal | Severity | major | Reproducibility | have not tried |
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Platform | Linux Mint | OS | Linux Mint | OS Version | 5.15.0-102-gener |
| Product Version | 1.6.0 | ||||
| Summary | 0017208: Tables in Scribus are awful, substantially worse than every other text handling program. | ||||
| Description | Contrast to LibreOffice Writer, hardly a table focused program, and it's clear that Scribus's handling of tables is extremely deficient. 1: There is no way (or at least, no clear way) to auto size cells to the intended text I've asked in multiple locations, and sought multiple guides, and the answer is consistently that i'm not doing anything wrong, Scribus is just really, really bad at tables. I've encountered enough major issues that have lasted because nobody actually reported them, so I'm doing it. | ||||
| Steps To Reproduce | Try to make a table. | ||||
| Tags | table, tables | ||||
| Patch | No | ||||
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Hitting enter in tags section submits. I don't see an edit button. Why? |
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2: There is no way to assign a header, giving unique formatting to the top row. 3: There is no way to set height/width of rows and columns beyond one at a time. In-fact, rightclicking is disabled when multiple cells are selected. The option is already labeled plural. 4: Table contents can not be imported from LibreOffice writer. 5: Copy-pasting a table from LibreOffice Draw (which can import LibreOffice Writer tables) defaults to importing the table's text as an SVG instead of text. The only workaround is to save and import the table, which gives the user the option to select to keep text as text or table, which stupid, slow, and annoying. |
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nö, the terrible state of tables has been previously reported. many times. as an example in 0015987 . there has also been an effort to improve the even worse previous state. the result is that we now have something that can indeed be called table, but i really don't see how the tool can be used to create something useful. sadly, on the other side of the barricades, there are also people who think that the tool in its current state can be used. anyway, the more i think about tables in scribus and the more i believe that: - scribus should not have tables - simple tables are better made with tabs or visual widgets (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_and_information_visualization#/media/File:20230606_Composite_of_bar_chart_(Sankey_diagram),_bubble_chart,_pie_chart_-_all_showing_same_data.svg). - tables should be created in external tools, if possible / useful, with bindings in the render frames. (advanced import features might be needed, as an example for matching fonts and colors). my take is: - people who want to have tables in scribus, should rather focus on enabling an excellent import from one ore more good external tools (starting from libreoffice). - from what i know, the best solution might be to get something that makes scribus' render frame integrate with D3.js (https://d3js.org/ ; or another visualization library used for data science; for c++ there is https://alandefreitas.github.io/matplotplusplus/). - and if somebody wants visual tools, the best is probably to create it as standalone software that produces an output that can be read and synchronized in scribus. i guess that what we then need is: - people who know such tools (if they exist; if not, that can build them). - get involved to make sure that their output can correctly be read to create print ready documents (as you can read in https://forums.scribus.net/index.php/topic,5130.msg23425.html this might not be as one could hope) - provide examples of workflows that work or not with sample data and details about the input and output (fonts, colors, ...) |
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4. Importing table of contents Just tested it: - I have created a Writer document with a table of contents - Copied the content and pasted it into Scribus if you want to get the styles to be kept, it should be possible to - Copy the content of the table of contents - Paste it into a new Writer document (as normal text) - Load that document into a Scribus text frame but 0017209 . |
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5. Getting tables from LibreOffice Theoretically, getting tables into Scribus works best by exporting the Writer table in a PDF and importing that "as text" into Scribus. Sadly, that does not work as good as it could: 0017210 By the way, if you the table is the only content of an ODT file, you can just export the document to PDF and import that as vectors: no need to go through Draw. |
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Yep, tables are pretty bad. The current form came from a google summer of code project and did improve things but its far far from good enough. Scribus should be able to create functional tables like any other application can. We need someone who wants to scratch the itch and code them properly. What we have is likely a good basis but it needs a lot of work. |
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I found that copying cells from LibreOffice Calc works much better than LibreOffce Writer. It looks like the paste is converted to a group of SVGs in Scribus. Unfortunately for me special characters like quotes or triple dots are converted into weird characters. If anyone knows where the problem could be (some unicode or font setting?) please share. |
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Following up from my previous note, I filed a bug and it was fixed in 1.6.3 <3 https://bugs.scribus.net/view.php?id=17287 I'm thinking having a renderframe that can read and display cells from an ods file might be very helpful too. Would love to give it a try myself but I struggle with the lack of code documentation and I have limited time. Also played around a bit with the 1.7 table updates. Still lacks the ability to style cells but it is a great improvement! |
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if libreoffice can produce a pdf from the command line, then it should be possible to create a filter for the render frames that reads it. i had a look at it and i've found soffice soffice --convert-to 'pdf:draw_pdf_Export:{}' table.ods https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/guide/pdf_params.html the problem i see: just exporting the ods file will not give you a good result. you will probably need to figure out how to avoid the header and the footer to be displayed (this might be easy...) and how to crop the size of the page to the real content (maybe a bit harder). but the once command line is there, it should be easy to create a new render frame tool. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-05-03 02:46 | VladVladson | New Issue | |
| 2024-05-03 02:46 | VladVladson | Tag Attached: table | |
| 2024-05-03 02:46 | VladVladson | Tag Attached: tables | |
| 2024-05-03 02:48 | VladVladson | Note Added: 0051131 | |
| 2024-05-03 02:57 | VladVladson | Note Added: 0051132 | |
| 2024-05-03 08:02 | ale | Note Added: 0051133 | |
| 2024-05-03 08:14 | ale | Note Added: 0051134 | |
| 2024-05-03 09:46 | ale | Note Added: 0051135 | |
| 2024-05-03 09:46 | ale | Relationship added | related to 0017209 |
| 2024-05-03 09:46 | ale | Relationship added | related to 0017210 |
| 2024-05-07 21:37 | cbradney | Note Added: 0051140 | |
| 2024-10-11 21:58 | Joozey | Note Added: 0051426 | |
| 2024-10-13 13:38 | Joozey | Note Added: 0051429 | |
| 2024-10-13 16:02 | ale | Note Added: 0051430 |
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