floating image with no padding does some extreme text (or ta

Everything related to our flagship word processor.
Post Reply
feneleesay
Posts: 2
Joined: 2016-10-10 19:48:24

floating image with no padding does some extreme text (or ta

Post by feneleesay »

I’m refactoring a large technical manual that is currently extant as a messy and entirely hand-formatted Word document.

If I had more time I’d re-start from scratch with HTML and CSS3’s print-friendly tools. This manual is set to go into maintenance mode, however, so I opted for Nisus Writer as the re-creation tool and RTF as a somewhat git-friendly text-only file-format.

And things were going tolerably well. Until now.

An appendix that documents various pin-outs available in the hardware the manual covers presents said information as follows:

port image | pin-out image | pin-out details table

The 1-second gif below demonstrates the problem:

Image

Moving the port image (in this case an icon-style RJ45 port) just a single pixel upwards bounces the right-aligned table down about 50 pixels.

It’s maddening.

And it’s not because I’ve got some outrageous padding values set. The screenshot below shows the properties of the RJ45 image, including the complete absense of padding.

Image

FWIW, the behaviour persists when I change the wrap settings from Wrap Box to Wrap Tight.

Any and all hints as to how to fix it or suggestions as to what’s happening welcome.

Thanks in advance.
User avatar
phspaelti
Posts: 1313
Joined: 2007-02-07 00:58:12
Location: Japan

Re: floating image with no padding does some extreme text (o

Post by phspaelti »

I can (sort of) reproduce this problem. It seems that when there are several floating images to the left of the table with text wrap turned on then the calculation of where the table gets positioned goes haywire. Could be that Nisus has a bug here.

How about trying to simplify things?

One option is to turn text wrap off on the images, and place the table manually (by grabbing the left edge of the table).

An alternative would be to use inline graphics, and place them in a table cell (and again make the borders of the cell invisible).

A third option, which just occurs to me is:
  • make a "blank" square graphic, of sufficient size to cover the two images
  • group the three graphics to make them into one large graphic
Simplifying the calculation that Nisus has to make to place things, should get around this kind of behavior, I think.
philip
User avatar
martin
Official Nisus Person
Posts: 5227
Joined: 2002-07-11 17:14:10
Location: San Diego, CA
Contact:

Re: floating image with no padding does some extreme text (o

Post by martin »

This does look like a bug in Nisus Writer. I'm sorry for the aggravation!

I've been able to reproduce a problem in a test document, which seems to be the same problem as what you've described. However, if you could send me a copy of your document, that would still be useful. That way we can make sure there aren't potentially multiple issues at play here. The best way to send us anything is via the menu Help > Send Feedback.

Thanks to Philip for suggesting some workarounds. I hope one of them is useful to you.
feneleesay
Posts: 2
Joined: 2016-10-10 19:48:24

Re: floating image with no padding does some extreme text (o

Post by feneleesay »

A third option, which just occurs to me is:

make a “blank” square graphic, of sufficient size to cover the two images
group the three graphics to make them into one large graphic
FYI, this worked. Grouping the invisible rectangle, the icon-style rj45, and the pin-out diagram into a single shape allowed me to place the, now combined, image as I wanted, next to the pin-out details table.

Thanks for the suggestion.

FWIW, this experience left me sorely missing the simple but elegant image and box-handling capabilities of Apple’s Pages.app

Arrange > Align Objects > and Arrange > Distribute Objects > aren’t exactly Illustrator-level control, but it’s close to exactly what I want when preparing text-plus-tables-and-diagrams documents for print.

Is there a feature request channel other than plaintive hope here in the forums?
User avatar
Hamid
Posts: 777
Joined: 2007-01-17 03:25:42

Re: floating image with no padding does some extreme text (o

Post by Hamid »

feneleesay wrote:
[...]
Is there a feature request channel other than plaintive hope here in the forums?
Here it is:
https://nisus.com/support/SubmitFeatureRequest.php
Post Reply