Tables once again

Polarigel · Post by **Polarigel** » Tue Dec 28, 2010 7:17 am

I see that there is a lot of heated discussions about tables in earlier threads- but I dare to open a thread on this again.

As far as I understand, there are a few users who asked for viewing and editing tables as a feature for years, but it wasn't implemented yet. I would like to know why. Maybe the developer explained that before, but I didn't find that explanation

I can think of to possible reasons:

Technical difficulties
Tables are too difficult to implement in Atlantis? Too unstable? Too time consuming?

Priorities
There are other features more important to the developer or the customers.

I can live without tables (otherwise I never would have bought Atlantis), but would like to have them. So if it's a question of priorities, table lovers should maybe continue to lobby for tables, nonwithstanding earlier irritations. If there's a technical problem- than there's nothing to do about that for us customers and we can keep quiet.

Polarigel

Post by **admin** » Tue Jan 04, 2011 8:43 pm

There is a mix of reasons. I can only say that Atlantis Word Processor will have tables in foreseeable future, but with no date to mention.

zaratoustra · Post by **zaratoustra** » Thu Jan 06, 2011 4:34 pm

I really hope... I have been waiting for this for a long time.

Allang77 · Post by **Allang77** » Thu Jan 20, 2011 1:54 pm

I am currently using two word processors as Atlantis has never supported tables. The second processor is a freebee called Jarte

Jarte is not as smooth as Atlantis, seems to be a shoestring type program, put together on the fly so to speak. Again, it is free and supports tables.

Seems odd to me that a free program has a programmer who has some capabilities not found on the Atlantis team. Boasting is okay, if the boasting measures up to expectations.

With Atlantis I open my production documents and with Jarte I table the information to send to my contractor. Two word processors and it is the one that costs $$ that lacks what is apparently a very common feature.

I really do not wish to hear about "maybe" and "we will work on it in the future".

Get this implemented NOW. Assign some people on it and get it out the door to the people who are putting bread on your table, the end user.

If... You are not making enough money on sales of Atlantis to implement basic features, then sell it to someone who has the depth to do so.

Post by **admin** » Thu Jan 20, 2011 2:44 pm

Allang77, your aggressive tone is improper. If you are a registered user of Atlantis Word Processor (speaking of "bread on our table"), the only legal agreement between you and us is the Atlantis Word Processor End-User License Agreement. You can request features. But I afraid you cannot demand anything. Neither it is up to you to instruct us to hire people or sell the project out.

As I said above, Atlantis Word Processor will have tables in foreseeable future, but with no date to mention.

Ferry · Post by **Ferry** » Mon Feb 21, 2011 5:33 am

more than 10(!) years ago I asked if there was a posibility to implement tables. Atlantis was at that time freeware and also in dutch available. The answer "Atlantis shall have tables in the future" give me hope that Atlantis
might be the best wordproccessor ever. Lot of options in a small program. In that time (10 years) a lot of improvements are added to the program. But no tables, Atlantis can never direct compatible with other wordprocessors working with RTF files containing tables. Now I know that, when Atlantis implement new futures, it's most of the time very complete and solid. When you want to implement tables it is nice that most of the possibilitys for a whole page are available in a cell of a table. That is what i think the biggest problem when you want a good table integration, using the RTF rules naturally. I'm not a software-engeneer but i think that waiting for more than TEN years for a implementation is very long. Is it possible to reconsider the order of development so this endless discussion can be closed. A lot of people let fall Atlantis only about the lack of tables.

I hope that you understand that with tables integration a lot of people be willing to pay and buy Atlantis.

Best regards
Ferry

purcelljf · Post by **purcelljf** » Thu Mar 24, 2011 8:16 am

Given the lack of table support I keep trying alternative approaches to doing my Epubs. Sigil keeps making enhacements that lessen my need, but unfortunately I still prefer Atlantis as a Word Processor over the others.

Leopoldus · Post by **Leopoldus** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:09 am

I absolutely support Admin, that the aggressive tone of Allang77's post was not acceptabe.

However if we put aside the rude form of Allang77's post, we should to admit, that there was a large grain of truth in this post. And you should agree with Ferry as well, that 10 years is a big too much to implement such feature as tables support, isn't it?
I suppose, that although not so many users submit their requests hear at the forum, actually the most of us would be very happy to see this option in Atlantis.

I think that it's rather a question of priorities of Atlantis team. Last versions of Atlantis had many significant, but IMHO not so much waited improvements (as e.g implementation of support for e-Books), but some most needed features (as tables or support for any open format of spellchecker) still wait their turn in not-very-clear "foreseeable future".
May be the list of priorities need some correction? Please consider making a poll at your forum to range mostly waited improvements?

epobirs · Post by **epobirs** » Tue May 03, 2011 4:08 am

I've registered here just to add my two cents.

I'd never heard of Atlantis before today, or if I had it was long forgotten. Recently, creating EPUB files has become a very important interest of mine and in many cases it will be impossible to create a proper conversion without the control afforded by tables.

While I haven't had a chance to do a proper evaluation, Atlantis in most repsects is exactly what I've been looking for, a strong word processor with native EPUB support. I'd be plunking down my $35 very enthusiastically for such an item if it had everything needed for the documents in question. But without that functionality I'm dead in the water. I've struggled with trying to get the right formatting without tables and it just lacks reliability across a wide range of apps and devices, which is the whole point of EPUB in the first place.

Atlantis has a chance to gain a lot of new users thanks to the EPUB support but the tables are needed to seal the deal. I'd say the chances are very high the next version of Mcirosoft Office will add EPUB and/or MOBI output support and will likely be launched to coincide with Windows 8. So there is a deadline looming on this opportunity.

purcelljf · Post by **purcelljf** » Tue May 03, 2011 10:58 am

It is still worth the $35 (at this time). You can use SIGIL to edit the EPUB in order to add tables exported to HtML from other applications. It is not ideal, and creates a hassle that I would not rather deal with, but it works.

The thing I still find best about Atlantis relative to either Microsoft word or Officewrite is the navigation panel.

keyosuke · Post by **keyosuke** » Thu Nov 17, 2011 1:09 am

I feel like it's good to remind the developers that we would all like tables. On the other hand, the point of a feature request is that it tells them what features we want, and they know about the table hopes since my first post over half a decade ago. I wasn't the first and I won't be the last to ask about tables, but at least I made the smart move when tables weren't available. I let them know how I felt, politely, decided what uses I would have for tableless Atlantis, and used it only for those uses. I never spent a years waiting for a feature I didn't need, cause there were so many other solutions to solve that problem than coming here and trying to push them into adding old features that everyone else except MS Notepad seems to have. Let's face it, folks... this application is the size of the period at the end of my post. I only became a fan because I was on a hunt for something that would fit in my free 10mb of harddrive space in 2004, and this did the trick. There were a lot of other awesome features, and my wife, the author, loved writing books in it for a long time. If you have a need for it, it's for you. If you need some other features, but another program, Asking these guys to add tables is about as useful as asking Microsoft to add a feature to windows. Same timeframe too. And that's not their fault. I'm willing to bet that huge chunks of this app are written in assembly, or that the sole code genius that is the only programmer who ever worked on it just does this on the side, with his 3 kids and the wife that he never sees because he's busy working some other job. You never know why stuff isn't done, but that's why you have the option of buying something else. It's a shame only a software engineer can appreciate something that does what this app does, in so few mb. If this was a game, it would be a 10mb version of Crysis, with all the same graphics, except everyones favorite gun would be absent.

Stop making threads to tell them about features the whole world told them about five or 10 years ago, when you were in preschool. I really wish these forum threads could be merged. My forum doesnt' even do that, but wouildn't it be great if we made them all into a 9000 page long table request sandwich?

Stirlitz · Post by **Stirlitz** » Fri Feb 03, 2012 10:23 am

keyosuke wrote:Stop making threads to tell them about features the whole world told them about five or 10 years ago, when you were in preschool.

Indeed. Let’s face it: Atlantis will NEVER support tables. There is no doubt about it now. Period.

Posted: Thu Sep 16, 2004 7:04 pm

Robert wrote:2) To set the record straight, —and as has already been stated many times on this Forum—, Atlantis will eventually support all the major features of a top-end word processor, including tables. So tables will be implemented. There is no doubt about this at all.

ecobob · Post by **ecobob** » Thu Sep 13, 2012 6:39 am

Hello Atlantis team.
Used Atlantis for a number of years.
Wanted a compact WP for an old laptop - only had a floppy disc!
V impressed and keen user.
Love the qwerky, (qwerty!?) typewriter sound effects and its speed.
Guess your main user base is authors?
I use Atlantis mainly now for our Friends of the Earth meetings
and really need to have a table feature so that actions to do by
can be put on, that and press releases.
I can use Open office but NO it takes for ever to load!!
I dont need all those bells and whistles,
But Please. Please, please look at putting in simple tables.
Help save the planet
cheers

Faithful · Post by **Faithful** » Mon Mar 18, 2013 9:44 am

I purchased and used Atlantis for a short time as I use tables on a regular basis. I asked if it would be a feature and I was told, "Tables are an important feature in a word processor. Atlantis will have tables in a not too distant future."
I have since not seen any work on tables or implementation.

I still want to use Atlantis, but at this point I have switched to SoftMaker Office 2012.

I am still holding out hope that one day Atlantis will receive tables, but until that day I will use a program that has tables already integrated in the program.

I would like to ask if not adding tables is a personal choice or if it might be a coding difficulty?

Thank you for what you have done, and I hope tables might be a put into the program in months and not years.

DaleDe · Post by **DaleDe** » Thu Oct 10, 2013 1:53 pm

I too would like tables for ePub support but perhaps there could a compromise to very simple tables. For example I could easily do without (for the first round):
* tables within tables
* headings
* specialized lines beyond a single width although invisible would be nice.
* formatting and justification within cells although left and right margins are important a single fixed size would be ok just to keep text from running into the lines.
* splitting across pages

Would these or other restrictions make it easier?

Dale

emcat · Post by **emcat** » Sun Dec 01, 2013 12:08 pm

admin wrote:There is a mix of reasons. I can only say that Atlantis Word Processor will have tables in foreseeable future, but with no date to mention.

Hi there Admin and Robert,

I see that so many of us are still interested in the question of table implementation. Many more than when I first asked in the dim past. I'm now 68 (wish me happy birthday) and it would be great to have this sooner, rather than later.

It occurs to me that if the issue is about money, perhaps everyone who wants tables could contribute, purchase in advance so to speak, the upgrade. I would do this happily. We are on our 9th book here and the usual fights over word processors have been superseded by the "fight template" we developed six books ago. Now it has been complicated by the move of some of our machines to Linux where Atlantis is a stranger, but regardless of the OS, we still need tables.

Thanks so much for the work that you do - outside of the tables of course!

Best to you in the New Year 2014, Maggie

Stirlitz · Post by **Stirlitz** » Sun Jan 11, 2015 9:38 am

I know that it is useless and I came to the conclusion that tables will never be a feature of Atlantis. Yet let me make a suggestion. Doomed to fail but just for the record. To support emcat’s idea and make it clear.

Let the developers come up with the price. In plain words, how much is needed to implement tables? Then, interested users can raise funds. I have a registered version of Atlantis yet I am willing to donate something. Not much, but it depends on how much... Let’s say $5 or $10. If there are a hundred users who make a similar donation (and I somehow feel there would be as many or more), this would be a grand. Some may donate more. After all, see how much MS Office costs. Even if you paid for Atlantis it was significantly less. Why not add something.

So if this is something we can collect together, let us do so. Even if it is going to take years. It has been 14 years since the feature was requested and if it takes a year more to raise funds it is OK.

Waiting for the developer team’s response. If they refuse to add tables even for a fee, then…

But I do not expect them to agree anyway. The project has been frozen.

franklinreid · Post by **franklinreid** » Sun Feb 22, 2015 6:02 pm

I like Atlantis so much that I have written three books with it. But I also miss the Tables tool I find in other wp programs. But I'm getting good at creating workarounds that are not a simple tool within the program. To do a table, I will make it in Word or Excel then use a screen capture utility like FastStone to capture the image and save it as a jpg photo. Then when I need it I just insert this "photo" into the file. It's not automatic but it works for me. If I need to change the table I open it in the program where I made it and revise, capture, and insert it again.

emcat · Post by **emcat** » Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:03 pm

franklinreid wrote: To do a table, I will make it in Word or Excel then use a screen capture utility like FastStone to capture the image and save it as a jpg photo. Then when I need it I just insert this "photo" into the file.

Franklin: Thanks for this, I had not thought of it!

Post by **admin** » Wed Aug 26, 2015 11:01 pm

Soon we will have news about tables in Atlantis. There will be an announcement on our Web site next month.

Atlantis Word Processor Forum

Tables once again

Tables once again

Tables

This is make or break for so many.

Forget About Tables For Good

tables for meetings - action this day!

HOW MUCH?

Tables