Talk:Tabular Layout (Table Extract Method)

Devon 11/12/2025

• For Step 1 on the Basic Setup section, the text starts right after the header:
  • Step 1: Create the Data Elements and select the Extract Method It is assumed that you already have a Project set up in Grooper with a Content Model, Document Type, and Data Model already created in Grooper before following these instructions.
    • Reanna Patton 11/18/2025 - Fixed
• "3. when the "Add" window appears, enter a name for your Data Column in the Name property."
  • When needs to be capitalized.
    • Reanna Patton 11/18/2025 - It looks capitalized to me. I'm not sure what you're seeing.

Randall 11/14/2025

• Part of me wanted to say more detail was needed that described how exactly the inner workings of Grooper actually create the table, but I have come to believe more over time that people want to know how to do things in Grooper, and spend less time being told how exactly it's doing it. I think the Basic setup section does a good job walking through ... the basics of how to setup a table with Tabular Layout.
  • Reanna Patton 11/18/2025 - I struggled with this too. After thinking about it, I felt like spending time fully explaining how Grooper is doing the thing would actually cause more confusion rather than showing them how to do the thing. I do try to explain in the supademos that setting the Value Extractors on the columns aids in row detection, but I just feel like too much information will confuse people.
• My personal taste for brevity has come to believe that telling people to click "save" every time, or "click ok to close the window", etc, isn't necessary. I also think in a lot of cases you can get away with showing how to do something once, then telling them to repeat the process on the remaining things. For example, when configuring the header extractors, I think you could show them how to do it on one column, then tell them to do a similar thing on the remaining columns. You do so in the steps above the supademo, but then you take the time to walk them through it for each column in the supademo.
  • Reanna Patton 11/18/2025 - This is something I struggle with regularly. How much do I show them step by step and how much do I rely on them just to do the thing. After showing them how to do it once, I'll usually show the other times in a simpler fashion without all the "click here" and "do this". I feel it's important to at least remind the viewer to save before going somewhere else is important, because I know especially when I was first using Grooper that was one of the things I struggled with. I couldn't understand why I couldn't go to another node, and it ended up just because I hadn't saved. I know it may be too much sometimes, but in certain cases I don't feel like it hurts anything too much. I may move to just saying "save your changes" instead of actually pointing it out with a box though. I'll play around with this.
• I would say it could use a demo showing extraction results to show the setup table in action. I tend to like to show a test so people can see things working.

Randall 12/15/2025

• In the Introduction, in the first paragraph, it says "It automatically detects...". I'd be careful with the term "automatically".
• In the Introduction it's probably worth mentioning something about the fact that it's strength lies in its flexibility among differing document types. It's not "fixed".
• In the Using a Header Row Extractor section it might be worth mentioning that you would use the Header Row Extractor instead of using Header Extractors set on Data Columns.