How to put tables in notes?

Question

Hey All,

Is there a way to make a table within a note?  I want to put in a table so the translators can easily compare words between multiple verses.  When I try to use a bunch of spaces or tabs to line up words, Paratext seems to compress them down to a single space (although if I edit my note, they're all still there).  I could replace all the spaces with periods or underscores but that doesn't look as clean.

Are there other white space characters that Paratext won't compress or other formatting options (like the Bold or Italics) that we could maybe use as a workaround?

For anyone else who is trying this, I start with Excel's Text to Column tool makes it easy to divide a verse into its separate words.  Then I found https://tableconvert.com/excel-to-ascii which fills in spaces between words to (more or less) line them up.  Then a simple find and replace can put in whatever non-compressible spacer you want to line up the words.  (Incidentally, if you have the words lined up in Excel, you can format them as a table use the drop down arrows to see if you have any subtle spelling differences.)

Thanks!

Example:

  1TI   \ip Kꞌoa̱sꞌìn    ꞌya‑le̱   nga       koanskan‑nile̱   nó   jàn‑kan   kao̱        ni‑jaò     kꞌoa̱  
  2TI   \ip Jè           xo̱n     xo̱kji         koanskan‑nile̱   nó   jàn‑kan   kao̱‑ni   jaon       kꞌoa̱  
  HEB   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga    koanskan‑nile̱   nó   jàn‑kan   kao̱       ñato       kꞌoa̱  
  1PE   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanskan‑nile̱   nó   jàn‑kan   kao̱ni    jaò         kꞌoa̱  
  1JN   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanska‑nile̱     nó   ñokan     kao̱‑ni   aòn        kꞌoa̱  
  2JN   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanska‑nile̱     nó   ñokan     kao̱       te           kꞌoa̱  
  3JN   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanska‑nile̱     nó   ñokan     kao̱       te           kꞌoa̱  
  JUD   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanska‑nile̱    nó   jàn‑kan   kao̱       te           kꞌoa̱  
  REV   \ip Kꞌoa̱asꞌìn   ꞌya‑le̱   nga     koanska‑nile̱    nó   ñokan     kao̱       teño       kꞌoa̱

Answer 1

This is not an answer to your direct question, but what you describe seems to me like a task for the Biblical Terms tool. Are you familiar with it? Quoting from the program help:

The Biblical Terms tool assists Bible translators and consultants with the process of checking for consistency in the renderings in the translated text used for various biblical words and concepts (based on the source language texts)

Comments

Hi lichti, thank you for responding.  

The Biblical Terms Tool is great if you are looking at how a specific Greek or Hebrew term is translated in a specific range.  I didn't explain my reasoning in asking for a table, so it is natural to assume that is what I'm trying to do.  

The specific task that brought up the question was comparing material in the book introductions (which I don't think the Biblical Terms Tool can search).  So looking at answers to the question "When was this book written" is going to produce similar sentences, but with multiple variations.  Looking at the table, I can tell (even as an outsider) that there are spelling mistakes and tone markers that need to be fixed, plus some phrases that are more natural than others.  I could write out a dozen questions, but it is easier for them and me to just look at an aligned table and spot the mistakes.  

Some other reasons for tables:  
I often want them to compare a specific phrase and not get distracted by all of the surrounding text that is different but correct.  I could possible make my own custom parallel passages dataset, but that seems complicated to set up and to direct the translation team to open, in contrast with a table in a note that needs no explanation.  

I could have them do a search for phrases like "Thus says the Lord", but searching by Hebrew doesn't show how it is translated and searching in their language (or the BT) doesn't show the variations.  I'm happy to do the searching myself and present them with clean data, but it is a hassle to do the searching during a checking session just because I couldn't present the data in an easily understood format.  

Tables can also be used more generally for a variety of things.  For example, if I wanted to explain the semantic differences between the different kinds of OT sacrifices, I could set up a table with the names across one axis and their attributes on the other.  Writing that out in prose would be a pain.

I could create a table and host it online and put a link to it in a note, but that obviously has its drawbacks.