I am just trying the KNIME new reporting functionality. I understand this might have some limitations in terms of the nodes supported (i.e. table view javascript or text widget do not seem compatible). When it comes to table related functionality only the table view node seems operational. However, there does not seem to be any formatting capacity or even the option to set automatic column withs or controlling the size of the table.
Does anybody know a way around this? or is it better to use some other tool (i.e. Tableau, Power BI) to overcome this issue?
I make minor adjustments using the CSS editor and flow variables. It is not a friendly process unless you are proficient with CSS and do a dive into the classes used and formatting supported.
I am not sure we speak about the same problem. The CSS works with the normal Table View (Javascript) node. However it does not seem to work for the standard / labs Table View node. The Javascript node (which accepts formatting) is not supported in the new reporting funcitionality (i.e. Report PDF writer). Therefore the tables (or text) on such reports will have very limited formatting possibilities.
Now I am following. Unfortunately we lost most of our customization options when they shifted their development from JavaScript nodes to the newer view nodes that had a more “modern look”. Personally I prefer being able to customize things to my preference rather than having 1 really clean modern universal formatting. My guess is that customization is more difficult to incorporate outside of those old javascript nodes and Eclipse based interactive views.
There have been plenty of formatting requests with development tickets along these lines. I will certainly add my vote if you want to post a newer one.
great to hear that you have tried out the reporting extension and thanks for the feedback.
We will absolutely improve this extension further and therefore the feedback is very valuable.
We are currently implementing functionality to include images in the report, which will also bring back the functionality to include the old views as images.
Regarding the customisation this is still on our list and we will enable this in the future again. It is not more complex to enable this in the new nodes compared to the old ones, but we want to take a bit of time to do it right, to also enable consistent styling across all your views compared to doing it individually for every node. I will share more information as soon as I have something shareable.
I would be eager to know the things that you are currently missing from the new reporting compared to what Birt offers. Birt offers a lot and it will takes us a while get there, but therefore it would be nice to know what are the most pressing features.
Universal Formatting of Table Structure (row height, column width) with overrides for…
Individual Row Height (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of Columns, or row number flow variable for conditional formatting) - (both Manual sizing and Automatic options based on font sizes: Narrow / Regular / Wide)
Individual Column Width (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of Columns, or row number flow variable for conditional formatting) - (both Manual sizing and Automatic options based on font sizes: Narrow / Regular / Wide)
Universal Formatting of Grid Thickness and Background Color with overrides for…
Grid Thickness and Background Color by Columns (x2) (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of Columns, or flow variable for conditional formatting)
Grid Thickness and Background Color by Rows (x2) (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of rows / flow variable for conditional formatting)
Conditional Cell Level Coloring should already be handled by Highlighting.
Separate Universal Font Formatting (style / size / color) for both Headers and Data with overrides for…
Font (style / size / color) by Columns (x2) (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of Columns, or flow variable for conditional formatting)
Font style / size / color by Rows (x2) (With Setting to use an alternate formatting every x number of rows / flow variable for conditional formatting)
Conditional Cell Level Font Formatting (style / size / color) via internal rules / flow variables.