In message , BillW50
writes:

"VanguardLH" wrote in message
...
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So you're going to make someone bounce between a word processor and
spreadsheet program just to, for example, see a list of ingredients in
a recipe?

Naw, MS Word can read Excel tables right inside of a Word document. This
is called integration.

I guess we should avoid the word "table". If you mean a grid (with or
without visible lines), then a spreadsheet - Excel or other - is NOT the
way to make it. (Microsoft haven't helped by putting grid-helping
facilities in Excel; I suppose "the customer is always right" so they
had to, rather than telling the customer s/he was a twit for doing it
that way.)

A *spreadsheet* is for data on which calculations are anticipated.
Granted, not _all_ the columns/rows will have sums done on them - I've
nothing against column and row headings - but if _all_ you want is the
_layout_, don't use a spreadsheet. (VanguardLH [what's the origin of
that name by the way?] are for once in agreement on something!)

Ever read a newspaper or even a small one-page flyer?
Really, that's your argument for not supporting tables in a word
processor, that you don't need columnar formatting ever?

I don't think of columns as tables per se. By the way, Atlantis does
support columns.

I find true columns as Word implements them rather clunky, though I can
see that if I was doing things that use them a lot, I'd use them. If I
just want a short section to have columns, I'm likely to use a table.
That's a Word table, of course - not a spreadsheet.

Uh huh, and I suppose you never used the tab key to align text either
in a single or multiple columns.

Indeed, for a simple case. (At least it's better than using spaces,
which I've - in pain! - seen people do. Especially with non-monospaced
text!)

I've been using word processors and text editors since the early 80's.
And back in the CP/M-DOS days I have created a few tables by using tab
characters. But since then, I can't think of a single time I wanted to
create a table (outside of a spreadsheet). And since I save lots of
computer articles (I use plain text if I can get away with it). And
tables just makes the task of converting to plain text a bit harder. Too
many people are creating tables and using them for things that are
totally unnecessary.

I'm sure some are, but grid layout does make a lot of things easier to
see at a glance.

Tables in documents aren't necessarily and most times are not a
spreadsheet with cells containing formulae. They are just a means of

Hear hear!

providing easy columnar *formatting*. So why bother with bolding,
italics, spacing between paragraphs, justification, bullet lists, or
any of that other unnecessary formatting fluff? Just with a plain
text editor, like Notepad, if you think formatting is unimportant.

I don't know, we do pretty well in plain text newsgroups without all of
that stuff. Some experts claim that plain text doesn't contain
formatting. But I disagree. Plain text can be formatted to contain many
of the features you listed above.

If you use monospaced text, then it isn't hard to make a table - grid -
in plain text using tabs; most plain text handlers to actually handle
tabs.
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That you don't need to use tables for columnar formatting is hardly an
excuse for a word *processor* to omit the feature. I didn't even

Agreed - tables should be included as part of a word processor (meaning
grids, not a spreadsheet [though I think Word's tables can do very
limited sums too!]).

mention embedding a spreadsheet or range of cells from one into a
document. I only mentioned tables which is a formatting feature.
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--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

no good deed goes unpunished. This is an iron-clad rule in Netiquette.