A recurring issue with Braille printing that I encountered during my years of activity is printing tables. It's such a debated topic that, at the beginning of Biblos, it was almost a focal point for those paving the way for me to find solutions to elegantly overcome them. I believe I have developed an effective solution with Biblos for easily printing tables as well. Let me tell you about it.

To start: what is a table? A table is a grid container formed by rows, columns, and cells. It has a rectangular appearance in which each cell of the structure can contain text and other typographic elements. A table can have a variable number of columns and rows. Columns extend vertically and are horizontally numbered, while rows extend horizontally and are vertically numbered. The basic unit of the table is the cell, and its position is identified by column and row coordinates, just like in a battleship game. Anything can be written or inserted within each cell.

As a Word processor, Biblos can make use of tables contained in documents. Tables can be created, modified, expanded, and the option to print them in Braille can be selected. Tables can be seamlessly exchanged with Software such as Microsoft Word or Microsoft Excel through easy copy and paste operations, to or from the Biblos document. For Braille printing, there are no limits on columns or rows.

Before Biblos, only structures with two or three columns were considered tables in Braille. Tabular structures were completely readjusted for Braille, distorting the inherent structure of tables. Tables with two or three columns were transcribed with data aligned in columns, as long as the data did not exceed the Braille space for each column. As we know, Braille uses few characters with fixed width horizontally, so printing complex tables was a real problem.

With Biblos, everything has been made easier. Biblos also prints tables in Braille, respecting their structure, columns, and rows. It has no limitations on columns and carries out printing operations with familiar ease, sparing the user from making modifications, manipulations, restructuring, or reorganizations, regardless of the original table structure.

You might ask: what do I need to do to print tables? Nothing special, you just need to print the document in Braille, and Biblos will take care of translating the tables into Braille as well. If you wish, you can decide how you want to print them, using the configurations available in the Braille Settings. The range of configurations you can achieve is extensive. However, the detailed customization options for each table for Braille printing do not mean that you are obligated to do so. These are opportunities that Biblos offers you, but in most cases, you simply need to print your document.

I won't complicate things further, but allow me to share two last tidbits with you.

Another pet peeve of the Biblos "enthusiasts" has been nested tables. Perhaps a Nested Table is even an unknown concept, but it seemed like a good challenge to tackle once and for all. Biblos also prints nested tables, which are essentially tables placed within a cell of another table. Okay, I heard a scream of despair... I won't go any further!

Alignments in column for small amounts of data are obviously achievable with Biblos, in various elegant ways. To align data in columns, tabulations are used, as it should be. Don't know what tabulations are? I'll make a note of it, and one of the upcoming articles will be about them.

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