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Tables Not Working As They Should

Posted: 2013-02-01 23:10:05
by wwgreaves
I am finding that the vertical spacing in table cells is not working as it should. Sometimes the data are centered when I click the center button, most of the time they are not.

Here's one example, but it is not working in any table with words in the cells:

Say, for example, I am trying to create a logo of my initials, WWG, in a box. I do this by creating a 1X1 table, entering my initials, and then having the table cell fit to the data inside it with the button for vertically centered data clicked. Most times the initials end up at the top of the box. Sometimes they are centered (not often), and other times they are at the bottom of the box (even less often).

There is an easy work around to get the initials centered at this point: click on the vertical bottom button, which glues the initials to the bottom of the cell — no matter how far from the bottom they may be — and then pull down the bottom border of the cell until the initials are centered. But this requires eyeing the distance, so the cell is not perfect, as it should be if the computer were calculating the distances.

Attached in PDF format are examples of the above exercise in different fonts.

This may be a minor problem, but it's frustrating — as I said, I am having the same problem in other tables with words as the data — and it took me a while to figure out how to manually fix it.

Thanks for your attention to this.

Re: Tables Not Working As They Should

Posted: 2013-02-06 15:00:20
by martin
Thanks for your description of this problem. You also reported this to us privately, and we've replied directly, but I thought I'd post here too in case others are interested.

I believe the cause of the problem is that different fonts have different baselines (the imaginary horizontal line upon which all letters rest), and Nisus Writer isn't taking this into account when centering the text in the cells.

Fixing this might be a little sticky, because there are bits of some letters that draw below the baseline called "descenders", eg: the lower loop on the letter "g". If we lower the text for fonts with higher baselines (like Adobe Caslon Pro) so it appears more vertically centered in a table cell, that could cause the descenders to draw over the cell borders. We'll have to take a look.

Thanks again for your report, we'll see what we can do.