BUG: PBB, tables and formatting issues

Andy

I am trying to build a PB of John Donne's Divine Poems and Holy Sonnets and am attempting to add line numbering. In order to do this, I have tried to use tables in Word (3 columns, the second for marginal notes, and one row). Unfortunately, when built in PB, the line numbering is consistently slips.

This is a screen shot from Word,

This is a screen shot of the PB,

You will note that the line numbers go increasingly out of sync throughout the document. I am trying to work with verse over 500 lines long which, given this slippage, is unworkable.

I have uploaded the .docx which produced these results,

1667.Donne - Divine Poems and Holy Sonnets - draft.docx

I have cleared the formatting in the .docx and had originally set the entire document to 'no spacing'. The results of this, discussed here, are worse. I have, therefore, set the number column to 'Normal', which at least gives an approximation of the correct positioning.

There is some discussion regarding this here: http://community.logos.com/forums/t/37590.aspx

I wonder if this is a bug (hence posting separately), but I appreciate that what I am attempting might just not be possible (due to the limitations of either Word or the PPB tool), in which case, it would be good to know this.

Thank you in anticipation.

Andy

Dave Hooton

I think the answer is found here i.e.

Not all Word formatting is supported, e.g. text effects and word art,
highlighting, fill effects, text boxes, charts, embedded documents and
other similar features will be ignored.

We have to wait for the next release (v4.5) before these will be attended to.

M G Smith

It appears that the compiler treats a series of carriage returns without any text before them in a strange way. While experimenting with your uploaded file, I managed to get the numbers lining up with approximately every fifth line of text!

However, I think I have found a workable solution. If you type a full stop in all of the blank lines in column 3, then the book compiles correctly. The numbers lining up as expected. This does not look too unsightly.

However, if you then select a set of these lines (between numbers) and change to text colour to white, the lines with dots disappear (including in the docx file!!), but everything lines up as you desire. The only possible downside, apart from the work to do this, is if a background colour to the page is selected under 'Resource Panel Background' in Program Settings. But having said that, I have mine set to 'Paper' and the dots are not obvious and I am not sure whether I can see them or just imagine I do.

Andy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/282153#Comment_282153

Dave Hooton said:

I think the answer is found here i.e.

Apologies, Dave, I missed that... I will look forward to 4.5.

Thanks for replying.

Andy

Andy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/282155#Comment_282155

M G Smith said:

It appears that the compiler treats a series of carriage returns without any text before them in a strange way. While experimenting with your uploaded file, I managed to get the numbers lining up with approximately every fifth line of text!

However, I think I have found a workable solution. If you type a full stop in all of the blank lines in column 3, then the book compiles correctly. The numbers lining up as expected. This does not look too unsightly.

However, if you then select a set of these lines (between numbers) and change to text colour to white, the lines with dots disappear (including in the docx file!!), but everything lines up as you desire. The only possible downside, apart from the work to do this, is if a background colour to the page is selected under 'Resource Panel Background' in Program Settings. But having said that, I have mine set to 'Paper' and the dots are not obvious and I am not sure whether I can see them or just imagine I do.

Thanks so much for this MG. I will give this a try tonight. Seems like it will be a very satisfactory workaround.

Thanks again,

Andy

Tonya J Ross

Compression of spacing involving blank lines in tables is something of which the developers are aware.  It should be resolved in a future release, but I couldn't say when.

I know it would be a lot more work, but you could always separate each line of text into a separate cell.  That way the line numbers will always line up without having to add extra characters and camouflage them.

Andy

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/282272#Comment_282272

Tonya J Ross said:

Compression of spacing involving blank lines in tables is something of which the developers are aware.  It should be resolved in a future release, but I couldn't say when.

I know it would be a lot more work, but you could always separate each line of text into a separate cell.  That way the line numbers will always line up without having to add extra characters and camouflage them.

I had thought of this, and then inwardly shuddered as I surveyed the 10,000+ lines of verse (the attachment above is just an extract)... [^o)] I think I will take the easier route for now, but, if it does not work, there may be no other option that to fill those 10,000 cells!

Thanks very much for the suggestion and I am grateful that this will be addressed at some point in the future.

Thank you, once again.