Make text into table

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Tobias Escher
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Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:32 pm

Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

Hi!

Yes, I mean the same heading row on every table. Either it can be left empty to filled with 2 text boxes ("heading column 1", "heading column 2"). The head row colour is already part of the style, that works great.

best

Tobias
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tobias Escher wrote:Yes, I mean the same heading row on every table. Either it can be left empty to filled with 2 text boxes ("heading column 1", "heading column 2").
OK, that's easy. I will do that later today.

regards,

Martin.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Tobias,

I have now added an optional header row to every table created:
text2table1.png
Untick the box if you don't want the header.

The download is the same as before, just overwrite the previous file: http://mystourport.uk/text2table.exe

I think it works ok, but without your actual files I can't properly test it. :)

regards,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Martin, Tobias and everyone else,

I've been following this thread with great interest but I haven't been participating because I didn't want to interfere and also at the moment I'm handicapped by only being able to dictate are not being able to type (broken finger from a mountain biking accident). Thanks a lot for the comments on my support, that's very nice to hear. When you're alone in your office only dealing with problems it's very easy to start thinking that the whole world is only full of negativity. 8)

The text to table conversion utility looks like a great project. My own policy recently has been to keep my own answers on the forum as universal and simple as possible, so that as many users as possible can understand and benefit from them directly. My hope was that this would encourage users like yourselves to contribute more power user projects and discussions and is now seems to be happening. This is really great and I'm loving it. :mrgreen:

If I could make some small suggestions on the converter to make it more generally useful, they would be these:

1) Keep the default identifiers at the start and end of the block of table text. But show them in the form, so that the user always knows what they are at a glance, and make it possible for the user to change them if desired.

2) Make it possible to select the input and output folders in the form.

3) Make the first folder the conversion folder and the second folder just a backup folder in case of disasters -- i.e. create a copy of everything in the first folder in the second folder as a safety net backup before you start work. This would make it possible to select the topics folder in a project directly, which would significantly increase speed and efficiency. If it turns out that something went wrong, the user would just need to copy the backup from the backup folder into her/his topics folder.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Tobias Escher
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

Hi Martin,

it works PERFECTLY! Totally awesome! I just converted all topics in an instant.

I stand by my opinion that these little gold nuggets could be beneficial to all users and you should think about a way to monetize them. Maybe something like 2€ per little app via a Paypal donation or so? That would allow you to get back a tiny bit of the development cost and we users could share our appreciation.

I secon Tim's feature wishes.
1) That would indeed be very useful
2) I personally have no quibble with the fixed folder, but it would be a nice convenience feature
3) YESSSSSSS!
I would like to add a personal 4):
Para Style/Text Style selection for the table content would be nice, too. In my case I need to change these from "Body Text" to "Body Text in Table". I can easily do it manually and have in fact just done so on all tables, but if this feature could be added to the application it would be even more useful.

In which software did you develop this? The application icon seems vagually familiar, but I can't place it...

Thanks so much again!!!!
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tobias Escher wrote:In which software did you develop this? The application icon seems vaguely familiar, but I can't place it...
Hi Tim, Tobias,

Thanks for the kind words. :)

It was developed in Delphi 5, which is now 18 years old. But I'm familiar with it and like it, and while Embarcadero make upgrading to the latest Delphi versions so very expensive, I'm sticking with it. But it doesn't always handle unicode and non-Ansi character sets very well. It is old and firmly 8-bit, and so am I -- I'm typically English with poor foreign language skills. It was only because I could see your text was in English that I offered to do this. I can change the icon to any other, but there didn't seem to be any need here.
I stand by my opinion that these little gold nuggets could be beneficial to all users and you should think about a way to monetize them. Maybe something like 2€ per little app via a Paypal donation or so? That would allow you to get back a tiny bit of the development cost and we users could share our appreciation.
I'm not a professional software developer, I'm an oily-fingered toolmaker -- the sole criterion in my software is whether it works, and is easy to use. Whether it complies with someone else's "standard" is neither here nor there. But I'm nowadays retired, and on a nice sunny day like today my preference is to be walking in the hills with my camera, not sitting in front of my computer. So everything I do is on a free "take it or leave it" basis, and under no circumstances am I prepared to accept any obligation whatsoever to provide anything or do anything. Any form of payment tends to create such obligations, so I'm only willing to accept strictly voluntary donations, and only on the clear understanding that they create no obligation on my part to respond or help with anything at all. I do of course try to help where I can, but only as my time and inclination permits. If you want to make a donation, thank you, see: http://templot.com/martweb/templot_donate.htm

At present this app is of no use to anyone except Tobias, because of the 00 or 01 table start markers. To make it usable for others I can easily make the markers configurable in the dialog. But it is vitally important that they are unique and don't occur anywhere else in the XML file. A string of unusual punctuation marks such as @??@ is generally best, although for all I know Alexander is already using some markers in the XML which I don't know about.

I'm not willing to change the INPUT / OUTPUT folders. By not changing the input files, you can keep trying conversions with different settings in the dialog until you get the desired results in the output files. But more importantly, by being sub-folders of the application folder, the application is guaranteed access to them. Accessing folders anywhere else on the computer can hit Windows permissions issues for some users. It is important to me that my software does not create any support requests whatsoever. However, I could add a function to create the folders if they don't exist, open the input folder for the user to paste their files, and then open the output folder afterwards for copying the results. This avoids the user needing to navigate to them.
I would like to add a personal 4):
Para Style/Text Style selection for the table content would be nice, too.
I did in fact start to do this, but it needs additional options and begins to get complicated. For example you might want to change the para style but not the text style, or vice versa. Or you might want to say "change it if it's Body Text, but not if it's Normal" or some such conditional. As always a program which starts out as a 5-minute task to do one specific thing grows legs and turns into a major project. If it rains tomorrow I will look at it. :)

Here is a video of Tim riding his mountain bike:

https://youtu.be/xQ_IQS3VKjA

I hope the damaged finger is soon mended, Tim. :)

regards,

Martin.
Tobias Escher
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

Just made a donation, Martin! Took a bit longer than anticipated because I was swamped with work and only today finally got to use Text2Table for my project.

I would very much appreciate having configurable table start markers.
As for the text styles: All my styles are Para Styles, so for me it would be enough to be able to have the same Style for text and para.
Hopefully one day there will be a very rainy day in England :)

cheers!

Tobias
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Tobias,

Many thanks for your kind donation. I'm glad you found Text2Table useful.

I haven't done any more with it yet, I have been rather busy. Not least because the great new EWriter functions in H&M 7.1 are making me re-think my entire Help strategy. :)

best regards,

Martin.
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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tobias Escher wrote:Martin: I had a look at PagePlus. It seems to be something like InDesign, just more affordable.
Hi Tobias,

I mentioned that Serif often have special offers. Today and tomorrow they are offering 50% off everything. Here is the relevant bit of email just received:

Starting on *Monday 25th July, with 50% off everything in store.
If you didn’t catch the 50% discount on Monday and Tuesday, you can still save 40% on Wednesday and Thursday, and 30% on Friday through to Sunday.
Monday & Tuesday Use code: JUL50
Wednesday & Thursday Use code: JUL40
Friday, Saturday & Sunday Use code: JUL30
Simply enter the relevant voucher code in your shopping basket.


No connection with Serif, just a happy user of PagePlus for fancy graphics.

Martin.
Tobias Escher
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Joined: Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:32 pm

Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tobias Escher »

Awesome! I shall have a look! Thanks!!!
dan weil
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Joined: Mon Dec 03, 2018 7:48 pm

Re: Make text into table

Unread post by dan weil »

Can we have a "Convert Table to Text" right click drop down tool. It should do the same as "Convert to plain text" but use asci 9 (Tab) instead LF or CR. This would allow "Convert Text to Table"-> "Convert Table to Text", -> "Convert Text to Table" to be carried out without loss.

"Convert Text to Table" is a real time saver until I need to add or remove a row entry (or also a column entry). then I " Convert to plain text" and add an entry. Now "Convert Text to Table" doesn't convert to the same format as the previous table so I have to replace all the CR with Tab before running "Convert Text to Table"
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Tim Green
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Re: Make text into table

Unread post by Tim Green »

dan weil wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 7:22 am Can we have a "Convert Table to Text" right click drop down tool. It should do the same as "Convert to plain text" but use asci 9 (Tab) instead LF or CR.
That wouldn't work in Help+Manual because tabs are forbidden almost everywhere. This is because tabs are unknown in all HTML-based formats, so they should not be used for formatting in your topics. If you use them your output will be restricted to PDF and Word, which obviates the purpose of using Help+Manual in the first place. So any table-to-text function would have to do exactly the same thing as Convert to Plain Text: Remove the table and replace it with normal, consecutive paragraphs. And that function is already there. 8)

If you need to convert individual rows you need to first split the table at the necessary points to turn them into an individual table, and then convert that to plain text.

In normal text the only place you should ever use a tab character is between the hanging portion of a hanging indent and the main part of the paragraph. This will be converted to appropriate HTML code in HTML-based output. You can't do the same for tabular text, however, because what would needed would be a table and HM wouldn't be able to know how to format the table just on the basis of tabs. So you should always use tables for tabular data, while being also aware that they will often break your page layout on smaller mobile devices. Life is complicated and there is no free lunch. :roll:
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

Private support:
Please do not email or PM me with private support requests -- post to the forum directly.
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