Line Types for Tables
The height of a table depends of the amount of data to be displayed or printed in a table. Therefore, you cannot use the line types in the Table Painter alone to describe the table layout, as you do it with line types for templates:
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With templates the view in the Table Painter directly maps the output on the form. This is possible because the structure of a template does not change at runtime.
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With tables the view in the Table Painter is an overview of all existing line types. However, it does not indicate which line types are used when for table output.
Dynamic Cell Height
The height of a table depends on the number of table lines and on the height of all table lines included in the output. The height of each table line depends on the highest cell, which again depends on the contents to be displayed in this cell. When filling table cells with contents, nothing is truncated, instead, the cell height is increased.
In the Table Painter, the height of the line types is displayed as a constant because it has no meaning for the output.
Using the Line Types
After defining line types for a table in the Table Painter, you can reuse them. To do this, create table lines in the navigation tree of the Form Builder and assign line types to them (see: Specifying Table Output). The diagram below illustrates how you can use line types of tables for output:
L3 could be a line type for the header, L2 for table items in the main area, L1 for subtotals, and L4 for the footer. The sequence of the line types in the Table Painter does not have to correspond to the sequence in which they are used. As the diagram shows, boxes and shading are connected to the line type. (See also: Setting Boxes and Shading).