Table inspector from 4W

[-= JB =-]

On Oct 14, 2008, at 6:25 PM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> -= JB =- wrote:
> > I think I know what you mean by independent column alignment.
> > Are you wanting to have each column use Left Center or RIght
> > justification?
>
> Yep - probably the one feature most developers here would  
> prioritize above all else, so central to information displays as it  
> is.
>
>
> > If so I bet that can be done pretty easy and you could have each
> > cell or each column justified.  It would take a little bit of math
> > to add a character in front of the item or column of items to
> > properly align the text Left Center or Right.  Not a big deal  
> really.
>
> Try it on a field with a couple hundred columns and a few thousand  
> rows and you'll see where this goes pretty quickly.
>
> Dropping that much data into a Rev field as it is today is  
> lightning fast - faster to display and much smoother to scroll than  
> even Excel or Word.
>
> But if you had to walk through each item of each line to calculate  
> the formattedWidth, and hope that you could obtain a correct  
> formattedWidth for the preceding padding spaces needed to have it  
> line up, with the engine as it currently is it's very slow.
>
> And with anything other than monospaced fonts very close to  
> impossible to get truly good alignment.  The space character is  
> more than one pixel wide so it requires settling for approximation,  
> which ultimately means some items will be a pixel or two off,  
> resulting in a ragged right edge.
>
> With a monospaced font it's possible to get adequate alignment, but  
> the performance issue remains.  And with the customary application  
> fonts on every supported platform being non-monospaced, whose users  
> would be happy being limited to Courier or Monaco?  At a minimum,  
> to deliver professional work we need Lucida Grande on OS X and  
> Tregoe on Windows (though it does't matter on Linux because there  
> is no single standard <g>).
>
> As much as I appreciate your ambition, I believe this is a task  
> best suited for the engine.
>
> -- 
>  Richard Gaskin
>  Fourth World Media Corporation
>  ___________________________________________________________
>  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com       http://www.FourthWorld.com

I am sure the Rev team can speed things up in time.  But many  
features available
are much better than nothing at all.

As for the proper spacing when I was using a demo of Rev over a year  
ago I asked
about adding a glyph for justification.  Someone suggested make an  
invisible image
for a glyph which would be 1 point and you could then enter the  
amount needed.

Things can be improved by the Rev team but many things can be used  
now.  If it gets
so large it is too slow you will have to wait for those options to be  
improved.

-=>JB<=-