Quark Forums

I'm going mad because I want to put a border around a section of a table, ie just one column, except the only way i can work out to select a column is via the contents tool, which means the option for borders in item modify disappears.
The help menu says if the column isn't highlighted when the modify box is open (which it isnt) click the button to the right of the preview area. I thought the preview area was the workspace but I cant click ther and I cant find any buttons to the right of anything to click either! Can someone please help me?

:(

Emyolanda

Sorry, but I don't have the answer you want/need.
I don't think it can be done.

Add these issues to the "list":

Top row of table is reversed (black bkgrd with white type). In that area I want the rules to be white. As it is now the rules visually "stop" when they get to the black area. There does not seem to be a way to build the table with varying color rules.

Occasionally when building a table, the left column does not get a column headline. So you have an empty "square" or field in the upper left of the chart. I would like to delete the grid lines above and left of that square so it looks completely blank.

Let us select rule "segments" within the chart.
Let us color them independently from the others.
Let us give them each different rule weights if we so choose.
Let us delete the rule completely from a cell if we wish.

Then both emyolanda and I (and a lot of other quarkers) will be happy!

Any advance on this? I'd even consider going with some kind of xtension option.

Hate to say it, but compared to doing table work in InDesign, Quark still feels clunky on this aspect in spite of all the interface improvements made with v8.

With all the hype surrounding Quark 9 and various reviews claiming it is the greatest thing for small design companies - clearly those companies are not working with tables! We have recently come back to Quark for a specific job - a design manual with hundreds of complex tables. We are working in Quark because the agency who were awarded the design and layout work use it, our job was to generate content. I thought I would streamline things by supplying the data in native Quark format to speed things up, but it has been a nightmare job. We do a lot of tabular type catalogue work and we have used Indesign for several years (switching from Quark). I saw the addition of bullets in Quark 9 and thought "at last", but was disheartened to see no changes to tables. Compared to Indesign Quark's tables are rubbish. There is no way any agency or production house doing lots of tabular work could stick with Quark without adding on expensive Xtensions. Quark this should be CORE FUNCTIONALITY!! Currently I have a guy on this job full time doing tables and the repeating issues are: 1. Cannot select individual cell/part row/part column/cell ranges and alter the border to these - in Indesign this is easy. Quark just edits the complete row or column grid line (which is useless). 2. Cannot split cells horizontally or vertically without wrecking the table - again in Indesign this is a one click affair. Quark adds rows and columns to the whole table not just the localised area. 3. So much of the table functionality is hidden away in dialogues when it should be single click on the interface - example - selecting a range of cells and aligning the text in those cells to be vertical centred - this has to be done by invoking the Modify pallete>text tab>vertical align. Yet to align horizontally it is a single click - this is just inconsistent interface design. Also the contextual menu is very inconsistent. Overall we estimate this job is taking 4 to 5x longer that it would in Indesign - just down to the table handling in Quark. Quark, please. There are lots of nice to have new features in Quark 9 that make me want to switch back from Indesign but until you sort out tables and the core bread and butter functionality there is no way we can even contemplate it.

I'd have to agree with you on this. Tables are very sad in XPress. If a job has tables in it then our studio uses InDesign. It's a no brainer. Was expecting enhancements to table creation and management in v9 but it didn't happen. It seems most of the new things are to do with creating and publishing for digital devices. Could be nice for some.

@ emyolanda
With the content tool selected press the shift key and then click on each line in the table. You can then modify those selected lines from the measurements palette. But it may not give you the result you're after as it will select the whole vert or horiz line and not just the lines in each cell.

Update: Oops. With QXP 9 it seems you can only select one line at a time using the above method. A step backward in usability.