Desktop publishing systems, such as Publisher, version 1.0, sold by Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., use "text frames". A text frame is a displayable object having boundaries with fixed dimensions for holding textual information. The textual information is constrained to fit within the boundaries of the text frame. As such, a text frame may be viewed as a clearly defined area that contains text.
Publisher 1.0 allows a user to create a table that is built as a set of adjacent cells, wherein each cell is a separate text frame. The user has no ability to resize the table in aggregate; rather, only individual cells may be resized. Hence, the user also has no ability to resize arrays of cells, such as rows or columns. When a user changes the dimensions of a cell in the table, the dimensions of other cells in the same row or column do not change in response. Instead, the burden of maintaining the relative dimensions of the cells in the table rests entirely with the user.