Table, Dimension & Alignment

Below is a summary of width of the text in (La)Tex, and my question.

If the paper size/margins might be different, rather than specifying an explicit dimension, one can use two tex commands, \textwidth and/or \linewidth.

\textwidth is the normal width of the text on a page. It should generally be changed only in the preamble.

\linewidth is the width of lines in the current environment. Normally equal to \textwidth, it may be different within an environment such as list or quote environments.

The \linewidth can be further divided up. For example, to define a table which left column takes up 40% of the space, use

Now here is my question, if I want to put table in table, for example, still, to define a table which left column takes up 40% of the space, but this time the table is in the right column, what is the best way to do?

T

This will get you an overfull hbox since you don't account for the column spacing. (And of course you should have no indentation in that line.)

So either suppress column spacing (using @{}) in the relevant places in the table layout definition) or use the tabularx package.

Have you tried just nesting the tables? It should do what you want; if not, what's the problem? Don't forget posting a minimal example of what you did in that case.

Thomas

yes, if you've loaded the calc package.

Robin

If you insist on vertical rules (which is a Bad Thing, for more on this read the booktabs package documentation) or need some space between the columns (which you will if they contain just text), you're better off using the tabularx package since then you don't need to know how much of \linewidth is really left for the columns:

Read the tabularx package documentation for more information.

Thomas

+

T

LaTeX normally sets the width of the tabular environment to "natural" width, i.e., determined from the contents of the columns. For narrow tables it is sometimes more pleasing to make them wider.

The 'tabular*' environments allows for setting a width; however, it is necessary to have rubber space between columns that can expand to the specified width. This can often be most easily accomplished by using an which sets the table width to 75% of the text width. This example also centers the table.

Use the p column specifier instead of l:

You can also use the `tabularx' environment (from the package with the same name) instead. It will provide an X specifier which will adjust the column width automatically.

Magnus

to make a ruber-lengthed column to stretch to the end:

or whatever: the X column is a p-like column with implicit (i.e., stretchable) width.

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=fixwidtab

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tabcellalign

Ulrike Fischer

actually, no. tabulary shares out the space between several variable-width columns, in an equitable way; tabularx is quicker and does an equally good job if there's only one stretchable column..

or whatever: the X column is a p-like column with implicit (i.e., stretchable) width. i thought it was obvious — plainly need more examples in the faq answer (noted in list of things-to-do).

Robin

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=fixwidtab

There are two basic techniques for making fixed-width tables in LaTeX: you can make the gaps between the columns stretch, or you can stretch particular cells in the table.

Basic LaTeX can make the gaps stretch: the tabular* environment takes an extra argument (before the clpr layout one) which takes a length specification: you can say things like "15cm" or "\columnwidth" here. You must also have an \extracolsep command in the clpr layout argument, inside an @ directive. So, for example, one might have

The \extracolsep applies to all inter-column gaps to its right as well; if original.

The tabularx package defines an extra clpr column specification, X; X columns behave as p columns which expand to fill the space available. If there's more than one X column in a table, the spare space is distributed between them.

The tabulary package (by the same author) provides a way of "balancing" the space taken by the columns of a table. The package defines column specifications C, L, R and J, giving, respectively, centred, left, right and fully-justified versions of space-sharing columns. The package examines how long each column would be "naturally" (i.e., on a piece of paper of unlimited width), and allocates space to each column accordingly. There are "sanity checks" so that really large entries don't cause everything else to collapse into nothingness (there's a "maximum width" that any column can exert), and so that tiny entries can't get smaller than a specified minimum. Of course, all this work means that the package has to typeset each row several times, so things that leave "side-effects" (for example, a counter used to produce a row-number somewhere) are inevitably unreliable, and should not even be tried.

The ltxtable combines the features of the longtable and tabularx packages: it's important to read the documentation, since usage is distinctly odd.

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tabcellalign

One often needs to alter the alignment of a tabular p ('paragraph') cell, but problems at the end of a table row are common. If we have a p cell that looks like

one is liable to encounter errors that complain about a "misplaced \noalign" (or the like). The problem is that the command \\ means different things in different circumstances: the tabular environment switches the meaning to a value for use in the table, and \centering, \flushright and \flushleft all change the meaning to something incompatible. Note that the problem only arises in the last cell of a row: since each cell is set into a box, its settings are lost at the & (or \\) that terminates it.

The simple (old) solution is to preserve the meaning of \\:

which one uses as:

(for example).

The technique using \PBS was developed in the days of LaTeX 2.09 because the actual value of \\ that the tabular environment used was only available as an internal command. Nowadays, the value is a public command, and you can in principle use it explicitly:

but the old trick has the advantage of extreme compactness.

The \PBS trick also serves well in array package "field format" preamble specifications:

The [t] goes after the {linewidth}. And it has nothing to do with the aligment of the content of the cells which is as default aligned to the top in your example. Sent a minimal document that demonstrates you problem.

Ulrike Fischer

Here is the shortest document that illustrate my question.

Thanks Shai

Just some text to separate the two tabularx environments

it is. The top of the cell is the baseline of the first line. The problem only is that this first line is rather height.

Your problem has nothing to do with tabularx. You don't seem to know how the inner tabular is aligned. In the first case the middle of the tabular is used to align it with other object on the same line. In the second case the first line of the tabular is used to align it with other objects.

Look at the folowing example:

Ulrike Fischer

Read the FAQ:

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=topgraph

Best regards,

Jose Carlos Santos

of each row. The rule will take up no space, but will make all the rows at least 3cm high. You could automate this with the array package, using >. To get the height of the the largest entry would require hacking internals, and probably use of the aux file

James Kilfiger

Use a \strut or a \rule with width 0 and the height you need.

Ulrike Fischer

Francois Patte

(or use \rule)

Donald Arseneau

Use the booktabs package. It does a better job with tables, and if you need to insert extra space, it provides the command \addlinespace.

Thomas Lotze

I think that the simplest is to use strut. Vertical alignment in the middle of the cell is not very clear. If you align the baseline with the middle of the cell, I'm not sure it looks centered. It's why the \Strut macro has an optional argument.

Jean-Come Charpentier

If you already know the height of your cells, then you could use an empty parbox to set the height of a row in every first column:

To determine \myheight, maybe the command \settoheight might be useful.

Regards, Catilina

I like to construct a table with different heights of rows. For example, the first row (colored) has an one line text with footnote size characters (with some identifying items for the next row), the second row also has an one line text, but with normal size of characters. I like that high of rows will be adjusted to height of characters. Is thehe any possibility to acieve this?

I look in FAQ and found the solution, how ones can change the whole row in table (using array package), but unfortunately, this work only for change the size (or style) of characters but the height of row remain the same as the other rows with normal size characters.

Look around by Google gives modest results, from that this is not wise to do to that this is almost impossible in LaTeX.

Regards, Zarko

tabular use for the rows the height of the strutbox of the fontsize that is active at the start of the tabular.

So you could try the following: set a small fontsize e.g. \tiny before the tabular. And in the cells use e.g. \small\strut …. or \normalsize\strut. (You need the \strut only in one cell in a row and it can come at the end). If you use a p-column you should put a \strut at the start and at the end of the text.

Ulrike Fischer

And the strut is scaled by \arraystretch. Probably the following redefinition already helps:

Heiko <oberd…@uni-freiburg.de>

After some experiments i found a solution which gives me desired behavior. In preamble I put macro from FAQ UK, omit the suggested start size \tiny.

Not just minimal example (but it show all desired look-out) what I did:

\usepackage{array,tabularx,colortbl}

% for fixed size of cells in tabularx % for colored cells

% from FAQ UK \newcolumntype{$}{>{global\let\currentrowstyle\relax}} \newcolumntype{^}{>{currentrowstyle}} \newcommand\rowstyle[1]{gdef\currentrowstyle{#1}% #1\ignorespaces}

\caption{ISO 646 - ISO 7 bitni kod, osnovni.} \hline \rowstyle{scriptsize\strut}% this adjust the rowh height and % character size \rowstyle{normalsize\strut}% this adjust the rowh height and % character size & DLE

well, a some problems still remain. the first one (quite disturbing) is that the space above text in rows is not the same as bellow, that second one is that the width of cells and the right side of rows don't align anymore.

regards, Zarko

You need to put the size commands in every cell. It's only the strut that is needed only once per row.

That is the normal behaviour of the strut/tabular. If you want more space you will have to use another invisible rule with more height (or less depth).

With array it matters if you put in \multicolumn the rule before or after the cell.

\parskip1cm

\fbox{strut N}

\hline N \\\hline

Ulrike Fischer

following your example I rearrange the positions of | in my tables and now the all cells align as it is expected!

thank you very much for your valuable help!

regards, Zarko

That is the default, as long as everything fits, right?

Put \renewcommand{arraystretch}{1.5} before the tabular. Choose the number so the biggest cells fit.

Donald Arseneau

I assume you have different (or sometimes even no) material in cells, or even whole rows? If this is the case then there are two simple ways to make sure your desired height is guaranteed everywhere.

Primitive, but useful.

Dr. Oliver Corff

I would say you need a \vphantom here. IIRC \phantom inserts an empty box with width, height and depth of its argument, \hphantom inserts a box with zero height and zero depth and \vphantom inserts a box with zero width. So first column of every row. Since what is important here is the height of the symbol, I would use \vphantom

Sven Bovin <m…@student.kuleuven.ac.be>

&\vbox to2cm{hsize=3cm\null\vfill stuff\vfill}&

Peter Flynn

read the documentation of the array package if you want to do more than trivial table typesetting. Something like m columns, page 2 or so.

David Kastrup

With those packages you have the m (or M?) column type. Use it for the 4-line p cplumn. (Yes, you need to vertically center the 4-line column, not the 1-line. That is a source of confusion.)

Donald Arseneau

While not prohibited explicitly, vertical centering may make a (formal) table harder to read, because horizontal rules are intended to be used sparingly. It's less obvious where the cell boundaries are — and therefore, what the text is vertically centered relative to — than in a gridlined tableau.

You can use \multicolumn to override column formatting for an individual cell. See a LaTeX manual for usage information.

Scott Pakin <p…@uiuc.edu>