How to color a "cell"?

[Richard Gaskin]

Craig wrote:

 > Richard wrote:
 >> I had hoped the paragraph-level formatting options introduced in
 >> v5.x would help, but alas as far as I can tell I can only set the
 >> backgroundColor of a run of text, not the full cell.
 >
 > I think this was discussed on the forum a while back. I do not believe
 > you can do what you want without another control overlying the “rect”
 > of the “cell”.

Thanks. I could get away with setting the backgroundColor of the whole 
line, but that does the same as setting the backgroundColor of a "cell": 
it draws the color only beneath the portion of the line that contains 
text, leaving the rest blank.

The borderWidth and borderColor paragraph properties work as expected, 
affecting the full line whether it's filled with text or has no text at all.

But backgroundColor as a paragraph setting feels broken, as it works the 
same as setting that property for a chunk rather than for the field.

 From the v5.5.4 Release Notes:

- The backgroundColor property allows the color of the content area
   (inside any paragraph border) to be filled (note that strictly
   speaking this property is not inherited, but the effect is the same
   as if it was as the background of the field is rendered before the
   paragraphs are so the background color at the field level will
   ‘show through’ to the paragraph if the paragraph has no background
   color).

- The borderWidth property determines the width of the border to draw
   around the paragraph.

Pretty much all the other paragraph-level formatting options work just 
their their field-level counterparts, but of course limited to the 
specified paragraph.

So I'm surprised the backgroundColor was added in such a way that it 
appears to do nothing we didn't already have with setting 
backgroundColor of chunks.

I was hoping I was just using it wrong.

Here's how I set it in my tests:

     set the backgroundcolor of paragraph 2 of fld 1 to yellow

Unless there's a different syntax I should be using, it would appear the 
paragraph-level implementation of backgroundColor is unfinished, no?


-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com