Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Editing/Make it possible to format tables in VisualEditor

Random proposal ►◄ Editing

Make it possible to format tables in VisualEditor

• Problem: Currently it's not possible to do many different things for tables using visual editor. You can add rows and columns, but you can't for example add background colours or set text alignment. You always need to change to the wikitext editor if you want to add background colours, and for newbies it may be very difficult to add html code.
• Who would benefit: Table editors.
• Proposed solution: Implement more tools for table editing.
• More comments:
• Phabricator tickets: phab:T54180, phab:T103276, phab:T99890
• Proposer: Stryn (talk) 18:38, 16 November 2017 (UTC)
• Translations: none yet

Discussion

Inline styles are both technically inferior (they make it impossible to have different presentation for different devices, screen sizes etc) and result in poor readability and maintainability of the wikitext. We shouldn't encourage them. TemplateStyles should be the preferred solution for table styling. (That still requires the ability to edit classes of table cells, if not their other properties, though.) --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 12:22, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

There are some pretty valid uses, such as aligning text right for number values as well as setting sort values on individual cells. (Though, I agree, the typical "PRETTY COLORS!" type is pretty obnoxious.) --Izno (talk) 03:53, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

There are valid use cases for formatting table cells, but editing inline CSS is not the right implementation for them. Define the styles somewhere else and implement some kind of HTML class editor in VisualEditor. --Tgr (WMF) (talk) 06:27, 19 November 2017 (UTC)

Don't get stuck on the discussion above as to what should be possible with tables in VE. Merging/separating cells, copy-pasting to/from excel/libreoffice and many more are possible.--Strainu (talk) 15:31, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Isn't this basically the same as the first one: Community Wishlist Survey 2017/Editing/More table types in editing section? Maybe they should be merged together. --Dvorapa (talk) 09:05, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

I wonder whether this should include phab:T180867/phab:T169306. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:24, 1 December 2017 (UTC)

Voting

•  Support Jc86035 (talk) 01:34, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support as above - I think a CSS / color / etc. editor is a bad idea but one limited to HTML classes would be quite useful. Tgr (talk) 06:35, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Liuxinyu970226 (talk) 13:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support TMg 16:06, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Husky (talk) 16:20, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support as a proposer Stryn (talk) 16:23, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I had a hard time when I edited a table for the first time Dexxor (talk) 17:51, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support — Draceane ^talk_contrib. 18:00, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Thomas Obermair 4 (talk) 21:46, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Libcub (talk) 04:56, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Sebastian Wallroth (talk) 07:25, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Slafayette (talk) 19:28, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Mathieugp (talk) 19:43, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Greggens (talk) 21:19, 29 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Daylen (talk) 04:20, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support ArmAg — The preceding unsigned comment was added by Armineaghayan (talk) 04:44, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support - yona B. (D) 06:59, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I love VE for editing tables, and this would be a great addition. Spinster (talk) 16:54, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Dromedar61 (talk) 20:48, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Sahaquiel9102 (talk) 21:36, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Jith12 (talk) 22:18, 30 November 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Braveheidi (talk) 08:04, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Hogne (talk) 09:39, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Premeditated Chaos (talk) 13:23, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support — Hmxhmx 16:17, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Superchilum^{(talk to me!)} 16:28, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ynhockey (talk) 16:53, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Justynian I Cesarz Rzymski (talk) 17:30, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Theklan (talk) 18:35, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ckoerner (talk) 21:32, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support --Xavi Dengra (MESSAGES) 21:48, 1 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Amir (talk) 00:50, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support ديفيد عادل وهبة خليل 2 (talk) 14:22, 2 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Michal Lester לסטר (talk) 07:33, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I think some basic cleanup also could be done when editing a cell (e.g. using inline CSS instead of HTML attributes like align or bgcolor – I know inline CSS is inferior to separate CSS, but it’s superior to the HTML attributes). Tacsipacsi (talk) 11:31, 3 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Gryllida 00:44, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Anthonyhcole (talk) 12:29, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Davidpar (talk) 15:17, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support vallue (talk) --Vallue (talk) 15:48, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Tiputini (talk) 17:10, 4 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Csyogi (talk) 18:15, 5 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support enL3X1 ¡‹delayed reaction›¡ 06:10, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support EMsmile (talk) 11:24, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support It is needed Yohannvt (talk) 12:06, 6 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support--ÀlexHinojo (talk) 05:50, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ahm masum (talk) 08:32, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Oblongo (talk) 10:09, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support —Alvaro Molina (✉ - ✔) 16:36, 7 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Julia\^talk 11:08, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 13:36, 8 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support This would be very helpful for users who do heavy table editing in VisualEditor, that I agree. RandomDSdevel (talk) 01:42, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Ecritures (talk) 14:01, 9 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support Akau (talk) 05:55, 11 December 2017 (UTC)
•  Support I am not using VE but Is it not possible? Poor VE! Infovarius (talk) 13:15, 11 December 2017 (UTC)