Background colour in table cells

[Greiggy]

I needed to put some background colour in certain cells of a table. So I

1. Selected the cell
2. Clicked on background colour in the Table Cell Shading palette
3. Adjusted background colour to solid (or various percentages)
4. Clicked on the colour well to change the colour, and selected a new colour in the colour palette.

Problem is, I can only change the text colour.... the background colour stays the same, or black.
Whatever I do to change the colour selected, seems to affect only the text colour. But I'm working in Background Colour.....

Any suggestions?

[rmark]

Greiggy,

I'm sorry you experience difficulties with Nisus Writer Pro.

I am a bit puzzled however by one of the steps you report:

2. Clicked on background colour in the Table Cell Shading palette

I don't see anything labeled "background colour".

Nonetheless, when I follow the task from top to bottom of that tiny palette:

1. Put your insertion point in any cell, or select cells.
2. Choose Foreground from the pop-up menu.
3. Choose the blend or pattern you want from that same pop-up menu.
4. Then click the color swatch on the left ("Foreground") and choose your color from the Colors panel.

I don't see how this could have changed the color of the text.

I hope that helps. If you need any additional assistance, please let me know.

[Greiggy]

Hi Mark, good to hear from you. You suggested...

1. Put your insertion point in any cell, or select cells.
2. Choose Foreground from the pop-up menu.
3. Choose the blend or pattern you want from that same pop-up menu.
4. Then click the color swatch on the left ("Foreground") and choose your color from the Colors panel.

The problem lies with No. 4 above. When I click on the colour swatch, and then go to the colour palette and choose my foreground colour, the colour appears in the "character" palette. I can achieve a, say, 25% black tint in the cell. However, the colour choice is not going to "foreground" but to the colour well in the Character palette.

--IanG

[martin]

To be clear, the table cell color swatches aren't labelled "Foreground" or "Background", but merely "Colors":

colors.png (2.43 KiB) Viewed 7919 times

I presume it's one of these swatches in the "Table Cell Shading" palette you're clicking. Changing either of those should never affect the text color (or the swatch in the "Character" palette). I've tried to reproduce the problem you're experiencing, but no luck so far.

Can you please again walk through the exact steps you take? Let's assume you start with one or more table cells selected (or text inside a table cell selected). Then you click one of the two color swatches; it should appear darkened:

red.png (7.24 KiB) Viewed 7919 times

You can see the red swatch (showing the foreground color) has darkened. The color panel has also appeared on screen.

As you adjust the color in the color panel, I take it that somehow the text in the table cell unexpectedly changes. Does the swatch remain darkened in the "Table Cell Shading" palette? Or has the swatch in the "Character" palette been activated (darkened) somehow? Did you take any other actions (eg: clicks, keystrokes, etc) between clicking the color swatch and changing the color in the panel? Another question: are your palettes docked in the tooldrawer, or are they free floating? I've tried both configurations, with no luck, but perhaps it's relevant.

Sorry for all the questions, but hopefully we can figure out where the problem lies. Thanks!

[Greiggy]

Palettes docked.

We are talking about the colour well, exactly as your illustration. By default it is shown black.

When I click on it (set to foreground and to a tint) I then click on a colour in the colour palette e.g. red, like your illustration.

I would expect the colour in the colours (Foreground) well to change to red.

Instead, the colour in the Text colour well changes to red.

Strange behaviour! If it is not a known issue, perhaps I should reinstall Nisus and see if that helps?

[martin]

Sounds like your actions are all in order. Sorry to make you list them so explicitly, for something so simple, but sometimes one has to be sure! A small difference can have big results when it comes to computers.

I think reinstalling Nisus Writer is unnecessary and unlikely to help. But would you be so good as to submit a feedback report using the menu Help > Send Feedback? You don't have to type anything lengthy for the description, perhaps just paste a link to this forum thread. I'm mainly interested to see if the collected logs reveal anything interesting about your computer and/or system. It would be best if you submitted a report just after you attempt to change the table cell colors and experience the weirdness you've described.

Thanks for your help!

[martin]

Hello again Ian- thanks for submitting a feedback report. There wasn't anything peculiar about your system, nor anything telling in any of the collected log files.

However, with some additional fiddling, I found what triggers the bug: using the list of standard colors in the color panel when running on OSX 10.6. If you switch the color panel to any other mode (eg: wheel, spectrum, crayons, etc) you should be able to work around the issue. For some reason using the "list" mode activates the color panel in a way that the other modes do not, and confuses Nisus Writer.

I'll make sure we get this fixed- thanks for working through this with us.