ep_data_tables — BETA

Etherpad tables via line based & character based styles

Purpose

The plugin is designed to support resilient and feature rich editing within data tables, while being transparent to other styles that might share the line. So, you can/should be able to insert any character based styles such as hyperlinks, font color/size/superscript/subscript, images (from ep_images_extended), etc into cells and they will display as usual. It also supports authorship coloring. Some block styles work but YMMV, ep_align is fully compatible.

Additionally, some other features are supported like real time column resizing and interactions via the tables toolbar.

It is based on ep_tables5 but takes the design in a different direction - ep_tables5 and preceding tables plugins stored the table JSON as text within the pad, this keeps the structure outside of the pad

Does not currently support the timeslider. Actually, I have no idea how to make it support the timeslider. Doesn't support HTML export. Some copy/paste actions can affect the table structure (I am dealing with this in another plugin ep_docx_html_customizer right now, but that is also WIP). Note this plugin is based on/branching from ep_tables5, more attribution will be added soon.

There are probably 1000's of unnecessary lines of code in the plugin, I am planning to clean it up soon, but I have not had time yet. The code was mainly generated by LLMs as I have been brute forcing the features I want for an etherpad based project. o3 summary below:

High-level data flow

1. EEJS injection (server, static/js/index.js)
   On pad load the server injects a small toolbar button, inline CSS and a <script> tag that registers the client hooks.

2. UI bootstrap (client, static/js/initialisation.js)
   postAceInit builds a context menu and a grid picker (like Google Docs) for selecting the initial table size.
   Menu actions call the two ACE helpers that the plugin exposes:
   • ace_createTableViaAttributes(rows, cols)
   • ace_doDatatableOptions(action) (row/column add-delete, etc.)

3. Table creation (static/js/client_hooks.js)
   ace_createTableViaAttributes calculates a table id, creates the requested number of Etherpad lines and, for each line, applies an attribute of the form
   tbljson::<base64(JSON)>
   The JSON contains { tblId, row, cols, columnWidths, … }.

4. Attribute ↔ class round-trip
   aceAttribsToClasses converts the attribute into a DOM class (tbljson-<base64>) so the value survives copy-paste and import.
   On the way back in (export, import, or timeslider replay) the server hook collectContentPre.js decodes the class and restores the attribute.

5. DOM rendering inside the editor
   acePostWriteDomLineHTML runs every time Etherpad flushes a line to the iframe.
   If it sees our attribute it replaces the plain <span> with:

   <table class="dataTable" …><tr><td>…</td>…</tr></table>

   Resize handles are injected into the first row, navigation helpers capture Tab/Arrow keys, etc.

6. Live editing helpers
   Navigation helpers (navigateToNextCell, navigateToCellBelow, …) translate cursor moves into line + offset updates so Etherpad OT remains sane.
   Structural changes (addTableRowBelowWithText, deleteTableColumnWithText, …) map UI actions to document operations by:
   • locating the affected lines via getTableLineMetadata
   • cloning / deleting lines
   • updating the JSON attribute.

7. Column resizing
   startColumnResize overlays a transparent drag handle.
   On mouse-up the new percentage widths are written back into each row's JSON and pushed through documentAttributeManager.

8. Styling (static/css)
   • datatables-editor.css draws borders, equalises row height, hides author-colour spans, and styles resize handles.
   • caret.css keeps the caret visible in otherwise empty cells.
   • table-menu.css skins the context menu.

File map

File / directory	Role
ep.json	Hook registration
static/js/index.js	Server-side EEJS bridge
static/js/initialisation.js	Toolbar + menu wiring
static/js/client_hooks.js	All editor logic (attributes, rendering, nav, resize)
collectContentPre.js	Server-side attribute reconstruction
static/js/datatables-renderer.js	Export & timeslider renderer
static/css/	Editor / UI styles
templates/*.ejs	Snippets injected into Etherpad shells

Current limitations (BETA)

• Merged cells and table copy-paste are not handled yet.
• Heavy DOM rewrites mean very large tables may impact performance.
• Codebase is still verbose and log-heavy for debugging; expect refactors.