I would like to propose a new feature for Okular that would allow users to disable the automatic horizontal splitting of tables when using the ‘table selection’. Currently, Okular automatically detects the rows as soon as I finish drawing a rectangle around the table area, which is helpful in most cases. However, I’ve noticed that when a table has cells with multi-line entries, the automatic row detection may not be ideal.
To address this issue, I propose to implement a way to disable this automatic splitting on a case-by-case basis. Specifically, I think it would be useful to be able to press a key before finalising the area selection to prevent this automatic splitting.
I believe this feature would improve the user experience when copying tables that have multiline entries in Okular. Thank you for considering my suggestion!
Unfortunately, I cannot edit my original post to improve it. So here is some additional information:
I can think of two ways to eliminate the automatic splitting: Either by pressing an additional button before finalizing the table selection or (even more intuitively) after the automatic split by deleting all splits by just pressing the Delete button.
In addition to advantages when selecting tables with multi-line entries in individual cells, another use-case would be the use in PDFs with OCRed text, where the individual paragraphs can be separated and aligned very well by using the table selection tool.
Without knowing anything about coding myself, can anyone tell me where in the code I would have to change something to compile a version of okular where the automatic line detection does not take place? Or even better, how could I make the automatic line detection deletable by simply pressing the delete key?
Maybe I’m lucky and one of the developers can give me a hint.