Table in formatted text (markdown): Joined cells possible, or just a backend glitch?

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1

Hi, this is a “bug or feature“ question. Assume this Markdown code, generated in a formatted text cell with python:

| Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |
|----|----|----|
| Cell 1 | Cell 2 | Cell 3 |
| Cell 4 is much longer than anything else, but two empty cells are missing |
Header 1 Header 2 Header 3
Cell 1 Cell 2 Cell 3
Cell 4 is much longer than anything else, but two empty cells are missing

This is vanilla markdown behaviour, as shown by this editor in forum.seatable.com. However, I discovered that Seatable’s backend just expands the “long“ cell across the whole width, both in the editor view and the form view (double blue arrow). Even though this can only be achieved by writing into the cell via API / Python, I was glad that this glitch exists, because the layout prevents a lot of wasted space:

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BUT the other day I discovered that in Apps, the same table displays as it would in this forum editor: The App just fills this first cell with a lot of text, and adds the 4 missing empty cells to the line.

Which one is the bug, and which one is the feature? Backend or App? I’m afraid it is the App that’s working as intended :frowning:

@ppm, can you add a screenshot of what it looks like in the App?

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3

Hi @abaer,
You’re right, the weirdest thing is that both webUI and Apps doesn’t behave the same!

However, I actually never found a clear definition of “vanilla markdown”, and the final rendering of elements other than ultra-basic ones always seemed to me to depend on the processor. Particularly, in your case, I didn’t find any common opinion about table rows missing pipes: If you don’t want a spanning cell, you should try adding the “missing” pipes (in order to have the same number of pipes on the last line than on the other ones), it seems to work as far as I tested.

| Header 1 | Header 2 | Header 3 |
|----|----|----|
| Cell 1 | Cell 2 | Cell 3 |
| Cell 4 is much longer than anything else, but two empty cells are missing | | |

Bests,
Benjamin

4

Hi,

@bha thanks for checking this! It may not have been the exact “vanilla markdown“ wording, but I remember that in some document laying down the very basics of markdown, the “no spanning cells“ was the basis, with the optional “markdown extension may decide otherwise“.

What strikes me here is the inconsistent behaviour that we discovered. The fact that SeaTable’s editor does not support cell spanning in the UI, as does the App renderer, but the backend renderer does, shows (at least for me) that the backend renderer actually is inconsistent. A simple 2 vs 1 decision.

However, you mistook my original intention: We’d really like to have cell spanning as a feature. Even if it was not accessible by the editor, but available in both renderers though Python. But I would also understand if Seatable made it consistent without spanning in both renderers, before somebody starts using that glitch :wink:

Regards, Arndt