Table support & other issues

  • Hi Julian,

    I hope you're well. I'm just about to start work again on a complex project I was developing a few months ago. There were a number of features that weren't in wpTools4 (or I didn't know about) which involved some horrible workarounds that I am hoping WPTools 5 has now resolved. I apologise if these questions have been answered already in the newsgroups.

    1 Is it now possible to set fixed heights for table rows?

    2 Do table borders/background colours etc now support more than 16 colours and, if so, how many colours.

    3 Is it possible to set individual thicknesses for each of a table cells borders?

    4 Table within Tables. I desperately need these, but I also need to be able to adjust the position of the inner table (eg to position say 1 cm from top/left of its parent cell's borders. Is this possible?

    5. I need to add pairs of matching visible markers to blocks of text as start and end markers. I currently add these as protected text. If one of these markers is deleted, I need to automatically delete the other one. At the moment, maintaining this is a little cumbersome. Is there any better way fo doing this in WPTools5 (or does one already exist in wpTools4 that I didn't know of)?

    6. Also, I use bookmark text as markers for user defined fields and I am having great difficulties with this and protected text. When the user presses delete when in or at start of bookmark/protected text or when they backspace into it, I need to delete the whole protected/bookmark text. In wpTools 4 this was a bit of a nightmare to use, for example, backspacing into bookmarks merely removes the bookmark tags not the whole bookmark and detecting thatyou were then in a bookmark was impossible. Any changes to the way these work?

    I look forward to hearing from you and apologise for the length of this.

    Regards,


    Mark

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hi Mark,

    >> 1 Is it now possible to set fixed heights for table rows?
    Yes. This is possible. The table row heights can be changed with the mouse if this has been activated in the EditOptions

    >>2 Do table borders/background colours etc now support more than 16 colours and, if so, how many colours. <<
    They support as many colors as are in the color array. It still works with a palette, this has to do with RTF specs. But the values are actually 3 bytes long.

    >>3 Is it possible to set individual thicknesses for each of a table cells borders? <<
    Yes. There are many properties which can be set for borders. One set changes all, then there is a set for all other lines, left, right ...

    All props are set in paragraphs using the ASet(WPAT_ ... , value ) method. (See HLP)


    >>Table within Tables. I desperately need these, but I also need to be able to adjust the position of the inner table (eg to position say 1 cm from top/left of its parent cell's borders. Is this possible? <<

    Tables have a left and right offset, or a left offset and a width. This is in fact possible but must be carefully coded.

    >> 5. I need to add pairs of matching visible markers to blocks of text as start and end markers. I currently add these as protected text. If one of these markers is deleted, I need to automatically delete the other one. At the moment, maintaining this is a little cumbersome. Is there any better way fo doing this in WPTools5 (or does one already exist in wpTools4 that I didn't know of)? <<

    This already exieted in V4: Bookmarks. They can be visible and in V5 you can use a custom draw event. If on e is deleted the other is deleted as well - at least this is how it is intended to work.

    WPTools 5 has the ability to uses other tags in thge same way. For example the SPAN tags work like this. They can even apply a certain style when the openeing and closing is in the same paragraph.
    But they are not RTF conform. Bookmarks are.

    >> 6. Also, I use bookmark text as markers for user defined fields and I am having great difficulties with this and protected text. When the user presses delete when in or at start of bookmark/protected text or when they backspace into it, I need to delete the whole protected/bookmark text. In wpTools 4 this was a bit of a nightmare to use, for example, backspacing into bookmarks merely removes the bookmark tags not the whole bookmark and detecting thatyou were then in a bookmark was impossible. Any changes to the way these work? <<

    I have to think about that. Bookmarks worked in V4 and V5 just like paired tags, the contents is not handled as one.

    A possibility can be fields - they also use start anbd end tags and it is possible to protect them anbd detect if the cursor is inside. For next release V5.08.5 I have improved the code a bit to make the selection of the fields more consistent.

    Julian