Digital Workshop

Hi All

I have recently upgraded to Opus 5.5 Pro XE from 2.81, when I access pages with tables in the new version they takes several minutes to open when they open at all. Needless to say this is unacceptable in a presentation environment. The Pages I refer to have 2 to 5 large scrollable tables made up of individual text boxes stacked in columns and rows within a scrollable frame. I have tried using the DocView feature with different formats but this is not suitable as the purpose of the pages and tables is to prototype software we have in development for sales purpose so extra frames and page elements you get with DocView don’t work. Surely by now opus must have a more sensible way of making tables without just grouping hundreds of boxes together?


Any Ideas

Phil

Phil --

Glad to have you onboard now that you upgraded from Illuminatus 2.81 to OPUS 5.5. That's a HUGE jump. There are many new features in 5.5 which will make your projects look and perform better than ever.

We've seen a tremendous increase in the number of SPAM postings in the past few weeks on this board -- all of it from first time posters who never include any Profile information. Phil, you might want to fill out your Profile with details regarding your hardware and software -- to show people you are REAL. Just a serious suggestion which may get you more responses.

To make sure your problem is NOT related to any up-converting of 2.81 to 5.5, I'd suggest you build a one Page Pub with a similar Table layout using v5.5. Not everything perfectly transfers to the new version of OPUS. Text Objects usually have to be "pulled" and "snapped" to avoid any clipped words. Hyperlinks usually have to be re-created in 5.5. One of the really nice features of 5.5 is when you type a URL, OPUS automatically creates the hyperlink for you. I don't recall anyone mentioning any problems with Tables, but it's possible you are the first person using a really large/complex Table. It's been a really long time since we've had anyone converting from such an old version of Illuminatus to OPUS. I believe DW is concentrating on NEW features for the next version of OPUS, so they may not spend time trying to enhance the converting of old versions to new ones.

Once you learn all the new OPUS 5.5 features, you are going to LOVE this product more than ever.

In my opinion, the short answer to your question is No.

However there is a QuickBuild option that will allow you to create a table like structure which might prove beneficial to you. Check the Help file out and see if that works for you.

Aside from that the only other thing I could tell you would be to use HTML to create your table structure and do either a screen capture or work with browser objects and bring in the "real" HTML. You can make browser objects display no "chrome" with little effort, so you would get the benefits of HTML very easily in Opus.

I fyou need additional help on further aspects, this board is filled with many people who are extremely helpful and knowledgeable.

Take a look here. The top is a "table" using text array and the QuickBuild option I mentioned in the previous post. The bottom is an HTML table in a browser object. The scrollbars are provided by the HTML. The borders for the table are provided by the TABLE tag in the HTML. Lots of possibilites.

Thank you bwpatric I have not tried using HTML, the quick build facility was my first port of call but it automates the way I used to create tables manually. After several test pages created solely in 5.5 with quick build I decided that the size and number of tables on the pages creates too much information to load in a single page. But using HTML could be a brilliant work around. Will let you know how I get on.[/code]

I find tables a real pain in Opus as there is no quick and reliable way of making them such as in Word etc.
The quick build facility is ok but when you produce a table with the gap settings set to 0 it actually means the cells butt up to each other giving horrible double thickness internal lines rather than the same as the original box used. Perhaps a -1 setting is needed in the quickbuild facility?
The only alternative is to build a row of cells spaced correctly and then copy and realign these over and over.
Not realy very efficient really.

Clive Cartmel

Clive

I agree that tables are a real pain

I have had some success by building a row of cells and either selecting all the cells and copying them as a unit to a gallery; or by saving the cells individually and saving each to a gallery. However, you still have to realign them, but I found this easier.

I've also built smaller tables which form subsets of larger tables, placed these in frames, and copied those frames to a gallery. From there, I can paste them to any page(s) in any pub(s) and fairly quickly realign them as needed.

I am a big fan of galleries. For those who have not used "Copy to gallery" I recommend it and suggest that you might find it worth trying. It has saved me hours of tedious repetition.

HTH