help! text>table =skinny text columns

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kcheney
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Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

help! text>table =skinny text columns

Post by kcheney »

After changing tab-delimited text in a Nisus Express (2.7) doc into a table, all the text in the cells is strung out in a thin vertical column within the cell, with only 2 or 3 characters per line. For example, "ZIP" (for zip code) is thus:
Z
I
P


Widening the columns has no effect.
Padding is set to 0.
Inserting the cursor to the left of a second-line of text and hitting backspace simply deletes a character (I thought there might be some hidden returns or other oddities).
None of the Alignment options in the Table Tools panel does anything to this arrangement.
I'm trying to get a membership list, for a small organization, into a spreadsheet, and don't own Word or want to.
What have I done wrong??
Thanks!
ssampler
Posts: 85
Joined: 2006-06-29 07:56:30
Location: Hudson River Valley, NY

Post by ssampler »

I've had this happen occasionally with NWP and also with Word. It appears as if an unchangeable 'right margin' is set in the table cells. Taking the tabbed text to BBEdit and zapping gremlins didn't help. TextEdit seems somewhat immune, so try that. I didn't save an example, so please send your problem document to Nisus Support and see what they say.

-Steve
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

skinny text, thanks

Post by kcheney »

Thanks, ssampler! and sorry I posted this first in the Pro forum instead of the Express forum.
ssampler
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Location: Hudson River Valley, NY

Post by ssampler »

You are very welcome. I just sent Support an example in which I created a table in NWP, pasted it into TextEdit, where it displays well, then pasted it back into NWP. The pasted version suffers from the 'right margin' problem.

The same thing happens when the rtf file containing the table is dragged into Scrivener. The resulting document looks fine there, but is broken when exported out as an rtf or copied and pasted back into NWP. This is not fatal, because Scrivener allows links to external files. But for a smooth workflow, I'd hoped to be able to copy everything from Scrivener back into NWP

OS X 10.4.11 NWP 1.02 Beta 2, PB G4

-Steve
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martin
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Re: help! text>table =skinny text columns

Post by martin »

kcheney wrote:After changing tab-delimited text in a Nisus Express (2.7) doc into a table, all the text in the cells is strung out in a thin vertical column within the cell, with only 2 or 3 characters per line.
Most likely the ruler settings for the table cell are not what you expect them to be. Make sure that the tail/right indent is set to a reasonable value.
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martin
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Post by martin »

ssampler wrote:I just sent Support an example in which I created a table in NWP, pasted it into TextEdit, where it displays well, then pasted it back into NWP. The pasted version suffers from the 'right margin' problem.
I've taken a look at the file and in your case the problem is indeed that the ruler's right indent is larger than one would expect. The problem does not however lie with NWP, but rather with TextEdit's RTF export. If I recall correctly, Scrivener makes use of Apple's RTF export, so that is why that application behaves similarly in this situation.
ssampler
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Post by ssampler »

Thank you, Martin. I did not realize that indents could be set separately within each table cell. Fixing the problem is easy: 1) Select the whole table, either by dragging or by clicking in a blank cell and pressing cmd-a. 2) Drag the right-margin icon on the ruler to the right. If the icon is already at the right cell border, it won't really move, but the attempt is enough to do the trick.
And of course it is not a problem caused by Nisus, but I'm not surprised there is a Nisus solution.

-Steven

Update: a little experimentation shows that instead of dragging the indent icon, applying a 'normal' style to the selected table will do. This opens the way to automating the process by macro.
kcheney
Posts: 33
Joined: 2007-01-03 10:12:13

text> table in TextEdit??

Post by kcheney »

Now I am trying to turn my tab-delimited NWE doc into a table in TextEdit. I have version 1.4 (220) dated 2005. And there are table construction tools but I don't see any options for importing text as a table, in menus or in the Help.

Have recent versions of TextEdit become something one has to buy from Apple now? I'm running 10.4 so I thought things like TextEdit were automatically updated when I updated the OS.

Sorry to keep posting a NWE issue to the NWP forum. AFter accidentally posting here I did cross-post in the correct forum but all the discussion is here...
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martin
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Post by martin »

ssampler wrote:Update: a little experimentation shows that instead of dragging the indent icon, applying a 'normal' style to the selected table will do. This opens the way to automating the process by macro.
You can also select all the table cells and use the ruler tag (the little yellow icon in the bottom right of every document window) and choose the menu Remove Ruler. That will remove all ruler overrides that are applied and use only the ruler settings defined by the applied styles.
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martin
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Re: text> table in TextEdit??

Post by martin »

kcheney wrote:Now I am trying to turn my tab-delimited NWE doc into a table in TextEdit. I have version 1.4 (220) dated 2005. And there are table construction tools but I don't see any options for importing text as a table, in menus or in the Help.
I don't remember ever having seen any. Perhaps they are implicit? For example, in Nisus Writer you can paste tab delimited text into a table to create new rows (if the structure matches). But probably not, as TextEdit is the barest of text editors.
Have recent versions of TextEdit become something one has to buy from Apple now?
No, you do not have to buy TextEdit from Apple, it comes standard with OSX and is updated automatically. It is basically the stock text engine that OSX provides for all developers. In fact, NWP is built from the same core that TextEdit uses.
Sorry to keep posting a NWE issue to the NWP forum. AFter accidentally posting here I did cross-post in the correct forum but all the discussion is here...
Don't worry about it. Especially in this case, where the topic is applicable to either Express or Pro.
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