[bergie]

I've been thinking about this a lot with Hallo (http://hallojs.org/), and I'm starting to come to the conclusion that the traditional way of doing tables in WYSIWYG editors is simply wrong.

What is a table editor would essentially be a database query, with data coming from your CMS or some other system? Then instead of building a generic table by hand you could do things like Insert a table of attendees of this event, with columns displayName, company, and email.

I'll try to do some experiments with this in the summer.

[BHSPitMonkey]

If you've used Drupal, what you're describing is simply the correct usage of one of its most powerful pieces: Views. However, even with its somewhat decent "query" editing interface, it's still a complex task that requires some critical data-oriented thinking skills. It's important, I think, for people to be able to format an electronic table about as easily as they can do it with a pen and paper. It's a fundamental formatting operation, IMO, and there should always be a fast/intuitive way of making them.