[scribus] How to get cool tables in Scribus. Yes!

[Christoph Schäfer]

Am Mittwoch, 15. April 2009 00:34:49 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> On Tue, 14 Apr 2009 19:19:38 +0200
>
> Christoph Schäfer <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de> dijo:
> > Am Dienstag, 14. April 2009 18:52:40 schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> > > I do textbooks and workbooks, so tables are pretty important to me. I
> > > am using 1.3.5svn and it still has only the grouped frame workaround. I
> > > don't know how long it will be before Scribus has real tables, so I
> > > kept working at alternatives, and I finally have a method that works.
> >
> > Copy your Writer table into Calc and use Calc for the final formatting.
> > Then copy the columns and rows of your table to the clipboard. Open a new
> > Draw document, use Ctrl+Shift+V and select "GDI Metafile" in the dialog.
> > Then export the selection to EPS. Unless your gs is badly configured, the
> > resulting EPS will be imported flawlessly into Scribus.
>
> I didn't try Calc at all because I'm pretty sure that in Calc you can't
> use all the formatting options for tables that you can in Writer.

Perhaps that's your problem. Why don't you just _try_ Calc instead 
of "being "pretty sure" without any knowledge=

> Tables in Writer were made to be design elements more than places for
> sorting and calculating. If you can format to the extent you need to in
> Calc, then Christoph's suggestion is another option.

When was the last time you worked with a spreadsheet program?

>
> I should add another issue that may make Christoph's suggestion better
> than my approach. After doing a few tables my way I discovered that
> Inkscape was putting a bounding box around the image the size of the
> page in which the original table had been created.
>
> Let me make that clearer. The original table had been created in a
> Writer document with inside margins set to 93.6 points and outside
> margins set to 57.6 points. The table extended horizontally from the
> left margin to the right margin. On an 8.5 x 11 inch page that made the
> table exactly 460.8 points wide.
>
> At first I just selected the table and exported to PDF (checking the
> box for Selection), then opened the table in Inkscape. Unfortunately,
> OOo's current PDF export function has a few issues. In this case it was
> adding the page number to the top of the PDF, even though I had
> selected only the table.
>
> To get around this I created a new blank, one-page blank Writer
> document into which I pasted the table before exporting. This document
> had equal margins of 75.6 points, leaving the same 460.8 points of
> editable space. I used this blank document as a scratch document.
>
> When I exported from the scratch document to PDF and opened the PDF in
> Inkscape it looked fine (no page number). Then I saved as SVG from
> Inkscape and placed the SVG into Scribus. It looked fine in Scribus
> until I moved it. The instant I moved it the graphic developed a
> bounding box around it the size of the entire 8.5 x 11 inch page, with
> (strangely) the margins of the original Writer document, not the
> scratch document. Don't ask. I have no idea why. The computer gods work
> in mysterious ways.
>
> Eventually I discovered how to stop the bounding box from appearing.
> Once the PDF has been imported into Inkscape, go to Item > Ungroup. I
> have to do this several times to get all the elements ungrouped. Then I
> can save as SVG and place into Scribus without having the bounding box
> appear.
>

Hmm, perhaps you know even more complicated ways to do this ;)

Christoph