* Text from source - tables in reports

[arthurk]

I've now managed to produce some sample tables on the lines of what I was suggesting. I concentrated on the England & Wales 1911 and 1921 censuses, as these are among the more demanding UK ones. (I accept that this method will not work as is for US censuses where a lot more data was collected, but it might inspire someone's creativity.)

For each of 1911 and 1921 I devised a table (a few extra twips crept in but they seem OK) and filled it with a mocked-up entry with columns as I previously devised. Line breaks in headers are deliberate to prevent unwanted breaks in words. The * in the 1911 header refers to a note I have below the table which copies the gist of the column header on the original form.

In each case I filled the table using:
A - default settings (Tahoma 8pt in editing window, Times New Roman in printed report)
B - Perpetua font, which I discovered comes out much smaller than the default ones
C - default fonts but at a smaller size, which I set with a manual edit in the raw text window.

I also discovered that Perpetua is even more compact in italic, so for comparison I added italic equivalents for all entries.

Here are the results, taken from a pdf of the printed report:

ak-1911tables.jpg (109.92 KiB) Viewed 638 times

ak-1921tables.jpg (99.2 KiB) Viewed 638 times

Using default settings (A) is clearly unsatisfactory, but both (B) and (C) look good to me. However, with these the text in the editing window is very small - I can cope for a limited time with this, but others may not manage at all. In addition, (C) can only be achieved with editing the raw text, which seems to be discouraged.

I haven't actually tried it, but I think you could get the same as (C) by reducing the text size by just 1 when editing, and then changing the default font for that part of the report to 9pt instead of 10pt, but that would also reduce the main body of the report.

I have to admit that I don't produce many printed reports so this is more to satisfy my curiosity, but I'm posting these images to see if it might be of wider interest. If it is, would it be worth working something up into a wish list item?

[arthurk]

The lack of response seems to indicate that this topic isn't of great interest to anyone else, but for one last throw of the dice, I've refined the settings and come up with what I think are slightly better results. For all of these I changed the font in report options to Times New Roman 9pt (previously 10pt), and adjusted the font in the edit window as indicated:

ak-1921-9pt.jpg (95.56 KiB) Viewed 608 times

A big improvement with all of these settings compared to my previous ones is that the text in the edit window is now bigger. Possible disadvantages are (a) the whole of the report body is now in 9pt; this takes a bit of getting used to but I could probably live with it; (b) option 2 still requires use of the raw text window.

So, to repeat my suggestion:
To make it easier to create fixed-width tables that need to neither shrink nor split, introduce a way to control fonts in sources more precisely. This might involve a font setting in the rich text edit window which allows the user to choose a size smaller than the default (currently only larger is possible), or separating the source font settings in reports from those for the main body - or both.

[NickWalker]

To make it easier to create fixed-width tables that need to neither shrink nor split, introduce a way to control fonts in sources more precisely. This might involve a font setting in the rich text edit window which allows the user to choose a size smaller than the default (currently only larger is possible), or separating the source font settings in reports from those for the main body - or both.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say "This might involve a font setting in the rich text edit window which allows the user to choose a size smaller than the default (currently only larger is possible)". My current default size in the rich text edit window is 10 but it gives the choice of 8, 9, 10 up to 72. And actually you can type in any font size into the box, even size 6 if you want. Size 8 is very small though.

[arthurk]

... This might involve a font setting in the rich text edit window which allows the user to choose a size smaller than the default (currently only larger is possible)...

I'm not sure what you mean... My current default size in the rich text edit window is 10 but it gives the choice of 8, 9, 10 up to 72. And actually you can type in any font size into the box, even size 6 if you want. Size 8 is very small though.

Oops Many thanks for pointing this out, Nick. Typing in a font size is a technique I use in other programs and I thought I'd tried it here without it working. I'd been trying all kinds of things and must have overlooked the obvious, which renders quite a lot of what I've written above superfluous.

In printed output I do prefer a smaller font for a source table (rather like footnotes are often in smaller print), and it does help to differentiate it from the main body text. With Times New Roman, 8pt vs 10pt seems about right to me.

As for the edit window, I've been using Tahoma 8pt, which I thought was the default - or maybe I'd changed it and it's my default rather than the default. Anyway, I've just changed it to 9pt, with 7pt for the tables; it seems like a 2pt reduction there carries over as a 2pt reduction in print, so with a 10pt default in the report settings I'll get the 8pt I'm happy with.

I can cope with 7pt in tables, where there's plenty of structure and space, but that's me, and I do understand that everyone is different and needs to find a setting that works for them. However, now you've reminded me about typing over the dropdown I might try out a few alternative fonts (again) to see if I like the shape and size any better. But unless I come up with something amazing I don't expect to be writing any more here.

Thank you again, Nick, and others who've helped me with this.

[arthurk]

... This might involve a font setting in the rich text edit window which allows the user to choose a size smaller than the default (currently only larger is possible)...

I'm not sure what you mean... My current default size in the rich text edit window is 10 but it gives the choice of 8, 9, 10 up to 72. And actually you can type in any font size into the box, even size 6 if you want. Size 8 is very small though.

Having experimented with this a bit more, I think we're both right.

I've changed my default size for Notes (and hence rich text edit window) from 8pt to 9pt, and when editing, the dropdown offers 8. I can type 7 into the box, but most times when I click Apply or anywhere else off the box it reverts to 8. I'm pretty sure that on the odd occasion it has stuck at 7, but I can't get it to do it now, or work out why it won't. I sometimes got the impression that the longer I fiddled with fonts and sizes, the less likely it was to stick, but as I've now got a setting that seems to work without needing to go below 8, I don't have much inclination to investigate further.

[NickWalker]

I think you need to select all the text either manually or using Ctrl+A and then change the font size.

[arthurk]

Selecting wasn't the problem, but going back to it now, I might have cracked it: with the text selected, type in the required size, then rather than clicking Apply, hit Enter on your keyboard. In fact by doing that I've even managed to get it to accept half sizes, e.g. 8.5.

Thanks for the inspiration

[NickWalker]

Sorry yes, I'd assumed you were hitting enter after typing in the font size. I'm glad you've resolved this.