Tables in DTpro

I am using DevonThink since 2002. One datebase indexes all my documents (around 60000), another works as a notebook or scrapbook with only a few hundred documents. Each time when I start a new writing project I am deliberating if I should use DT for the draft phase or look for a more appropriate tool. Mostly I stick to DT. This time I have to create several little tables - only with text -, and this part is in DT a bit annoying.

The RTF tables in DT have several issues. A tiny one is that you cannot create more than 25 rows with the little arrow in the table palette but have to type in the number.

But in general the handling of the tables is inconvenient. The control over the width of the rows is tricky - e.g. if you want to reduce the width of a middle row of three, the third row gets wider.

After several years of grumping acceptance I would now suggest to enhance the table function. A nice example for the handling of the table function is Apple’s Numbers. With a few clicks you can adjust the shape and behaviour of cells and cell groups, enhance them with color and so on. - It would help if it was possible to import / paste Numbers tables into DT. If I copy & paste a selection it loses the table properties and is only a tabbed text. (Pages understands such selections from Numbers, of course).

The RTF table functionality is completely handled by Mac OS X’s text engine and it’s difficult to enhance this. But an alternative to tables might be sheets.

For some kind of data, maybe. But sometimes I understand a table better if it is nice organized. The Mac-RTF limitations influence some usage scenarios in which I waste a lot of time by doing things twice - draft process in DT, finishing in Pages or In-Design. That would not be necessary if the formatting capabilities of DT were better. I like to organize my stuff an create working papers, scripts, proposals in one environment! (Perhaps next century …)

That may be true, but generally DTPro’s table handling is about the worst I’ve seen in any application. Oddly enough, tables I copy in from Word are better behaved that tables I make from scratch. I can plain-paste text into a handmade DTPro table cell, and it tends to insert rows and try to “connect” cells, where selecting text in one cell selects text in a cell in an adjacent column.

Does it behave the same way in TextEdit?