FlipFriddle
03-30-2006, 07:49 PM
New to these forums, so be gentle :)
I usually post this kind of stuff over at MacObserver.com, but there haven't been enough designers arounds lately. Thought I'd hang with you guys awhile.
On to my dilemma:
I currently rely on an old OS9 app called Entable to create all of the tables in the RPG books I design. I would love to get rid of it and find something new and OSX compatible to do what it can, but I have had no luck so far.
The tables I create are all styled the same way but their content varies wildly as far as number of rows, number of columns, width and height of cells, etc. Entables biggest advantage is its style sheets. A single stylesheet can contain all of the typestyle information as well as the cell attributes. For instance, all of my header rows have a black background, center justification, and white 8pt Futura Bold text. In Entable I can set this as a single style and apply all that info to a new row with a single click; useful since I sometimes have to create over 100 tables for a given book. Also a tables width or height can be fixed, so resizing columns or rows will not change the size of the table; useful for keeping it in a certain column space in a page. Tables can also run across multiple pages.
Entable never made it to version 2 - it was discontinued in favor of TableWorks abut a year after it came out.
I've tried the built in table editors in Xpress 6.5 and InDesign CS and they lack nearly all of the features that entable has. Anybody have any ideas on something that could work like this? I wish I knew how to write a program as I'd try and build it myself.
I'm stumped. Thanks.
I usually post this kind of stuff over at MacObserver.com, but there haven't been enough designers arounds lately. Thought I'd hang with you guys awhile.
On to my dilemma:
I currently rely on an old OS9 app called Entable to create all of the tables in the RPG books I design. I would love to get rid of it and find something new and OSX compatible to do what it can, but I have had no luck so far.
The tables I create are all styled the same way but their content varies wildly as far as number of rows, number of columns, width and height of cells, etc. Entables biggest advantage is its style sheets. A single stylesheet can contain all of the typestyle information as well as the cell attributes. For instance, all of my header rows have a black background, center justification, and white 8pt Futura Bold text. In Entable I can set this as a single style and apply all that info to a new row with a single click; useful since I sometimes have to create over 100 tables for a given book. Also a tables width or height can be fixed, so resizing columns or rows will not change the size of the table; useful for keeping it in a certain column space in a page. Tables can also run across multiple pages.
Entable never made it to version 2 - it was discontinued in favor of TableWorks abut a year after it came out.
I've tried the built in table editors in Xpress 6.5 and InDesign CS and they lack nearly all of the features that entable has. Anybody have any ideas on something that could work like this? I wish I knew how to write a program as I'd try and build it myself.
I'm stumped. Thanks.