View Issue Details
| ID | Project | Category | View Status | Date Submitted | Last Update |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0017814 | Scribus | Tables | public | 2026-05-13 19:15 | 2026-05-27 16:41 |
| Reporter | ale | Assigned To | |||
| Priority | normal | Severity | feature | Reproducibility | N/A |
| Status | new | Resolution | open | ||
| Product Version | 1.7.4.svn | ||||
| Summary | 0017814: Tables: get Scribus to behave in a similar way as LibreOffice | ||||
| Description | In the last few days, there have been a few improvements to the tables in Scribus that might slowly make them usable. While doing some testing I noticed one thing: there is no way to use the keyboard to modify the size of the cells. In Scribus, frames are resized with the alt key, but inside of the tables, we are using the alt key to move from one cell to the adjacent ones. I've had a look at how LibreOffice works, and I have the feeling that it should not be too hard to change the Scribus behaviors to match how it works there. The big advantage would then be that we have the same shortcuts and a similar behavior in two free packages. Here is an analysis of how LibreOffice works: P.S.: just to be clear: we don't need to do the same as LO does, but if we can agree that their behavior is good (enough), it can help us to have a sound behavior, without the need to experiment and find out what works and what not. - tab moves from cell to cell; shift-tab moves backwards - ctrl-tab inserts a tab in a cell - alt-vertical-arrow enlarges / shrinks the row (by moving the cell bottom) - alt-horiztonal-arrow enlarges / shrinks the cells column (on the right side) - when some text is selected, tab select the current cell and the next one - when some text is selected shift-tab selects the current cell and the previous one. - when at least one cell is selected, each tab and shift-tab enlarges or shrinks the cells selection, resulting in a contiguous area delimited by the cell originally selected and the current cell. - while multiple cells are selected, alt-move is disabled - when, extending the text selection with shift-arrow, if the cursor goes over the last character in the cell, the current cell and the next cell are selected - as soon as at least one cell is selected, shift-arrow makes the next cell in that direction the current one and the cells between the original one and the current one are selected. I hope I've captured all subtleties. | ||||
| Tags | No tags attached. | ||||
| Patch | No | ||||
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My comments: tab moves from cell to cell; shift-tab moves backwards - works in Scribus now - ctrl-tab inserts a tab in a cell - could be interesting - alt-vertical-arrow enlarges / shrinks the row (by moving the cell bottom) - unable to reproduce in LO - alt-horiztonal-arrow enlarges / shrinks the cells column (on the right side) - unable to reproduce in LO - when some text is selected, tab select the current cell and the next one - as arrow/shift-arrow does this, I don't see a need to replicate this really - when some text is selected shift-tab selects the current cell and the previous one. - as arrow/shift-arrow does this, I don't see a need to replicate this really - when at least one cell is selected, each tab and shift-tab enlarges or shrinks the cells selection, resulting in a contiguous area delimited by the cell originally selected and the current cell. - works in Scribus now - while multiple cells are selected, alt-move is disabled - unable to reproduce in LO - when, extending the text selection with shift-arrow, if the cursor goes over the last character in the cell, the current cell and the next cell are selected - works in Scribus now - as soon as at least one cell is selected, shift-arrow makes the next cell in that direction the current one and the cells between the original one and the current one are selected. - works in Scribus now |
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Thanks cbradney for the work on the tables! Still, when testing the functionality, I have the feeling that a few bits are still missing, in order to make the table to be usable. Here a few further comments, in general they still go in the direction of being more similar to LibreOffice: - (First, I'm not sure that going into edit mode on click on the cell is a good idea: it should behave like the text frame and get into edit mode on double click, E key and when Scribus was in edit mode before the click) - ctrl-tab for inserting a tab is important: otherwise we won't have the decimal aligning - I wonder if we should be able to also define individual tabs from the right side. We need it anyway for RTL text, but can also be very useful for LTR text frames (as an example for right aligning the page numbers in the TOC and allow resizing the frame). - There should be (more) table wide settings that define how the tables behave. (Or, probably better, the table styles should contain more configuration options) - One of the table setting should let create tables where the rows are as high as a single text line (instead of the rows filling the height of the frame). - Another table setting should enable and automatic resizing the of the rows, according to the content (the manual resizing is already possible). This should probably be the default behavior (no idea if the current behavior has a use case...) - Make sure that all the action in the context menu are also in the table menu (and in the action search; as an example "Adjust row height to text" is missing). - Adjust row to text should also work when the cells are empty. Probably, in the table settings there should be a default paragraph style that can be used to calculate the row height. - Display the cells borders also when there are no borders. - (As already discussed,) it should be possible to set the text properties also when not in edit mode (and format multiple cells at once) - The behavior of the cursor on the border to activate the row or column selection or the frame handles is not obvious. I think I'd prefer to have the frame to be selected on the first click on the table (except if we plan to change the behavior when working on the other type of items) |
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Yes, single-clicking the table should not enter edit mode. (I almost filed a bug for that) ale's suggestions on other things are valuable as well (though not all of them went through my use case yet) |
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I'm tempted to test single click for text frames too. I think it's more convenient but we need to get it right for other modes. With tables, we used to have 3 click which was terrible. Alt -tab works on MacOS, ctrl-tab should work on other platforms as of the weekend or prior Tab implementation for RTL is not dependent on tables. Not related. More styles options are coming later this week I think. I have some basics for headers and alternating row colours etc Which cell borders are not displayed? |
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@cbradney a while ago, I created a concept for editing options directly on the canvas. I just wanted to share a few ideas (perhaps for later). |
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The tiptap editor has another nice concept of table editing directly on the canvas. See here in action: https://tiptap.dev/docs/ui-components/templates/notion-like-editor |
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RTL Tab implementation can be related to the tables, if we want the tab to be defined from the right and move when the right cell border gets moved. (that's mostly the same that we need to implement to get the tabs to work for RTL) This can be important for tables with decimal numbers. Before going for the single click activating the edit mode, I think that we should thoroughly think about the consequences. |
| Date Modified | Username | Field | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-05-13 19:15 | ale | New Issue | |
| 2026-05-14 07:42 | ale | Description Updated | |
| 2026-05-16 20:07 | cbradney | Note Added: 0053707 | |
| 2026-05-25 16:41 | ale | Note Added: 0053741 | |
| 2026-05-25 17:24 | qirat | Note Added: 0053742 | |
| 2026-05-26 17:19 | cbradney | Note Added: 0053743 | |
| 2026-05-26 21:18 | nitramr | Note Added: 0053745 | |
| 2026-05-26 21:18 | nitramr | File Added: canvas_gestures.png | |
| 2026-05-26 21:27 | nitramr | Note Added: 0053746 | |
| 2026-05-26 21:27 | nitramr | File Added: tiptap_table.png | |
| 2026-05-27 16:41 | ale | Note Added: 0053748 |