Beta testing tables

General comments and questions. Technical support.
StewCam
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Beta testing tables

Post by StewCam »

Apologies for not having anything very detailed to contribute - just wanted to be first to report that the beta version with tables is awesome!
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Post by admin »

OK, thanks for the first strike. :)
rstroud
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Just downloaded it!

Post by rstroud »

I just now downloaded version 2.0 with tables support. I am looking forward to trying it out tomorrow.

A note to everyone trying to download the beta ... Be sure to REFRESH your browser if you follow the link and see the old message that «no beta is currently available». I got that old message several times, until I decided to try refreshing my browser.
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Post by admin »

Strange. That page is not supposed to be cached.
StewCam
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Post by StewCam »

I have been using the underscore character to create a line in headers and footers. I can now insert a table and use a border instead. Nice!
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Caching of beta test

Post by rstroud »

Admin: Strange. That page is not supposed to be cached.
Yeah, it puzzled me, just because I have not had an issue with this kind of thing on the internet for a lot of years.

I am using the most recent version of Firefox.

Anyway, thanks for the tables support!
Gerard
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Crash with Access violation

Post by Gerard »

First of all, congratulations with tables! Looks great, intuitive, much better then tables in Word.

I came upon a crash (access violation 0044E814) by creating a table with 4 rows and 4 columns, selecting the table and choosing 'Split Cells' with 6 rows and 6 columns (just to see if I could). With different settings sometimes it crashes, but this particular example does every time.

Cheers,
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Post by admin »

Fixed. Thank you, Gerard.

You can choose the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu command of your Atlantis to update.
DaleDe
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headers

Post by DaleDe »

I am happy to report that I just imported a word file with a header that used a one row table with a picture in one cell and text in another and a third empty. It worked perfectly.

One question: Are column and row titles coming? In particular column titles that would repeat on the next page.

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Post by admin »

The public (non-beta) version 2.0.0.0 will have the features available in the current beta. More table-related features will be considered for minor updates to version 2.
rstroud
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Bug in table export to epub

Post by rstroud »

PROBLEM:

A simple table, which looks fine in Atlantis, does not have borders in the epub. Here is the table as it appears in the epub (viewed with Sigil). The code follows the table.

Image

Image


CORRECTION:

I do not know if the following is the best correction, but it works.

Image

Image

I hope that all of that was clear. I should have reduced the graphics in size. I will know better next time.

I have also noticed another problem in the generated epub (not with tables) that involves spacing between paragraphs, but I will have to investigate it some more before I make a report.
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Post by admin »

It would good to have the source document file (RTF, DOC, or DOCX).
rstroud
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Source document

Post by rstroud »

I sending the document to you. It is a partial document, but it is what I used to test the tables feature.

Here is another puzzle. I created another table in the same document. I still did NOT have border lines in the generated epub of the second document. However, the "td0" class for the cells did at least give a non-zero value for the border (it gave 0.045em).

At that point, I thought that maybe I had confused some code in the document that I posted here. However, I generated the original epub again, and I still had "0" for the border value.

Another complicating factor is that, even after I tweak the code to make it work, the borders do not appear if they have a value of 0.045em, which is about one-half point. If I increase the value a bit (up to 0.09em) the borders appear. But I think that this is a separate issue from the one that I originally raised.
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Oops!

Post by rstroud »

Oops, I did not realize that I was submitting an attachment that anyone could download ... but no matter. I will eventually make the material available anyway. It is just some pages from a draft of a FREE manual that I am writing about how to use the «Fade In» screenwriting software.
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Post by Alan »

I have a dual monitor setup with the main monitor in Landscape mode and the other monitor in Portrait mode. I do all my word processing on the Portrait mode monitor. Atlantis always opens on the main monitor. I drag the window over to the Portrait monitor and click Maximize. When I dragged the window over and maximized, the bottom of the screen displayed the last line in the window before being maximized down the rest of the maximized window. I tried scrolling up and down to refresh the screen and have the window display the document from top to bottom but the bottom part remained with repeated line. I closed and reopened Atlantis with the same happening again. To open documents or Atlantis I use the Jump List from the Task Bar.
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Re: Source document

Post by admin »

rstroud wrote:I sending the document to you. It is a partial document, but it is what I used to test the tables feature.
Thanks.

I do not know which application you initially used to compose your document. But the cell borders in "FadeInTutorial_Part.docx" are invalid. The border type is "single", but border width is "0". This is not OK. And this is why you have invalid cell borders in the corresponding EPUB file. From now on, Atlantis will automatically replace such invalid border width in documents of any type with the default border width (1/2 pt).

You can update your beta through the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu command of Atlantis.
rstroud wrote:Another complicating factor is that, even after I tweak the code to make it work, the borders do not appear if they have a value of 0.045em, which is about one-half point.
I suppose you are viewing the generated and tweaked EPUBs in Sigil.
1/2 pt is a default border width both in Atlantis and MS Word. It should not be displayed as a 0-line-width border. Even a thinner border (1/4 pt) is possible in MS Word documents. Possibly there is a problem with rounding numbers in Sigil. Any border whose width is not 0 (no matter a measurement unit) should have line width of at least 1 pixel.
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Post by admin »

Alan wrote:I have a dual monitor setup with the main monitor in Landscape mode and the other monitor in Portrait mode. I do all my word processing on the Portrait mode monitor. Atlantis always opens on the main monitor. I drag the window over to the Portrait monitor and click Maximize. When I dragged the window over and maximized, the bottom of the screen displayed the last line in the window before being maximized down the rest of the maximized window. I tried scrolling up and down to refresh the screen and have the window display the document from top to bottom but the bottom part remained with repeated line. I closed and reopened Atlantis with the same happening again. To open documents or Atlantis I use the Jump List from the Task Bar.
Sorry, but I cannot say much on this. We do not have such monitor setup to be able to find out what is causing the problem.
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Thanks ...

Post by rstroud »

I do not know which application you initially used to compose your document. But the cell borders in "FadeInTutorial_Part.docx" are invalid. The border type is "single", but border width is "0".
At this point I really do not know what happened. In any case, I have experimented a few times since then and have not encountered the issue again.

I will download the updated beta.

Thanks.
rstroud
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More on tables and epub

Post by rstroud »

Since my original post, I have further investigated the issue of tables and epub production.

This may have relevance to the interests and activities of at least a few users of Atlantis.

Here are some things that I have observed through some experimentation.

These comments relate to the generated epub code, and to tweaking it, not to formatting within Atlantis.

1. In the epub code for the table definition, it is not necessary (contrary to what I first thought) to provide a border width for the lines in the table. I think that this relates to the "collapsible" quality that is attached to the table definition, but I am not going to delve into that whole subject. Suffice it to say that experimentation showed me that the epub only needs a declared border width in the CSS (cascading style sheet). And Atlantis does that for you with a default border value of 0.042em, which is 1/2 point in size.

2. However, those of us who take these matters seriously are going to check the epub within something like Sigil and/or Calibre, which are free programs that are ebook readers and also epub editors. I use both of them to make minor changes and to perform some other epub chores.

3. Here is an issue that you should be aware of if you are a serious ebook creator.

Sigil and Calibre do not display table borders at 0.042em (1/2 point). I have tested this several times today. It may work for you, but it does not for me. I realize that you can create a table in Atlantis or Word and have border lines that are 1/2 point. In fact, that width for a border line is very common. They show up just fine in those word processors, but they are invisible in Sigil and Calibre (again, that is my experience, and yours may be different).

It is very easy to fix this in your epub if you are someone who has worked with code for a long time, but I know that most people are lost when it comes to this stuff.

I found that Sigil needs lines of 0.059em, and Calibre needs 0.055em. I think we can round up to 0.06 for convenience. A 3/4-point line is about 0.062em. I am going to use something close to that for my table lines.

The only ebook reader that I have (except for programs on my computer) is a Nook from the Jurassic era. I did not even try to test tables on it. However, I have an Android smart phone, and I found that the 1/2-point lines display fine on it.

The problem is that an extremely small line, like 1/2 point, may not display on all the many devices out there. It is a real problem to try to produce an epub that will display on everything.

The bottom line is this: If you put tables into your epub, you may need to use a "thin" line that is a little thicker than 1/2 point. I created a table in MS Word today, as a test, and made the lines 1/2 point. I imported the Word document into Calibre and then used Calibre to convert it to epub. When I checked the generated epub file, it appeared that the 1/2-point lines had been converted to 1-point lines. I say "appeared" because the code was a little verbose, and by that time I was really tired of hassling with it all and did not pick my way through it with close attention. But I think that Calibre made the lines thicker — and that was a reasonable thing to do to accommodate as many ebook devices as possible.

I apologize for the long post and for anything that I garbled. I tried to make it clear.
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Post by admin »

The latest build of this beta of Atlantis does not save border widths to EPUB leaving the choice to eReaders.

Please choose the "Help | Check for Updates..." menu command of your beta to update.
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