Cannot bend BIRT designer to my will

system_migrated

I am finding the BIRT designer to be completely frustrating. So far I have been unable to do the following

1 Align a header vertically in the middle. I have tried setting this property on every single element that could be related to the header and still in Preview the text aligns to the top

2 Cannot set properties on cell border (see previous post). I created a style with a simple border and yet when I apply the style, the border is a thick line instead of a thin one. Sometimes. Sometimes I get the border I want.

Is it user error or is the layout editor of this tool unusable? I was excited when I first heard about BIRT and especially jsf4birt, but I cannot spend 2 hours just to get the table borders the way I want them. And then have them appear completely different the next time I look at them.

TDR