editable matrix or table

[slast]

I need to make a web page with a large matrix or table on it (25 or 30 cells wide) in which the individual blocks can be both edited with text inside and for colour. Is there a template or technique for doing this? I can't find a way to do it other than creating separate individual boxes for both graphic and text and trying to align them which is very time consuming. It is easy to do it in an excel table but that seems to only copy as a single graphic. Can text boxes have an outline or background colour (other than just the characteristics of the text characters themselves) ?

Thanks
Steve

[gwpriester]

Try this Steve http://www.xaraxone.com/webxealot/workbook56/page_1.htm

[Albacore]

My solution to this is to do the table or matrix in Word or Excel and then copy and paste into Xara as a "Enhanced Metafile". Now it is very large when it is pasted in so you have to hold down Shift and reduce the size of the metafile but all the text is still editable. This method is much easier than the tutorial that Gary has linked to and assembling the table in Word or Excel is very easy.

[gwpriester]

Can you edit the Enhanced Metafile table in Xara, Peter?

[Albacore]

Did it yesterday! Try yourself just select a piece of text without ungrouping the table.

[gwpriester]

Blimey. You're right, Peter.

[slast]

Thanks guys, I'm getting there. However my problem was really to get a table in which I could colour the cell interiors independently to show distribution of various factors graphically. The workaround I found for that was to create one rectangle, make a lot of duplicates and then Arrange>Align>distribute horizontally to get the top row, duplicate that many times and distribute vertically. I then used the text box technique as per some of the tutorials or Peter's Excel "copy as metafile" for the labels. It still seems odd that a programme as powerful as this doesn't have such an apparently basic graphic facility though, I would have thought it's not just a web page (HTML) function.
Cheers
Steve

[Albacore]

Hi Steve, I don't know any vector programme, and that is what Xara is! that can design it own table or matrix. The programme that you are using just happens to be able to produce a functioning web site because Xara the company thought this was a good niche in the market that they could exploit and so introduced this facility but it is still a vector programme and not an html editor like Dreamweaver. Illustrator like Xara has to use the same function of copying and pasting from anything from Word or InDesign or if you prefer to import a Word doc. which has been saved as a PDF do it that way you get the same result. All that I am trying to say here that it is hard to expect a vector programme to act like a DTP or HTML editor which they are not.

[slast]

Hi Albacore,
yes I understand that. I would have thought that what I was looking for is not confined to website/HTML work. I guess that could be achieved with some sort of macro (some version of create cell>duplicate>magnetic snap> repeat?? ). Anyway I think I have the workarounds I need now
Cheers
Steve