Bonjour Jean-Philippe

Thank you for your response. That sounds very promising. I don’t remember why I didn’t use natural tables when I’ve started setting things up for this journal. I think I’d might have had something to do with tables that break across pages. (At least, this is what https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Tables_Overview currently says: extremetables are said to be better when page breaking is involved.)
Have you ever noticed problems in that area?

Best,
Denis

Von: Jean-Philippe Rey <jean-philippe.rey@centralesupelec.fr>
Gesendet: Samstag, 27. November 2021 17:36
An: mailing list for ConTeXt users <ntg-context@ntg.nl>
Cc: Maier, Denis Christian (UB) <denis.maier@unibe.ch>
Betreff: Re: [NTG-context] Have a cell span multiple columns with tabulate

Dear Denis,


Le 27 nov. 2021 à 13:25, Denis Maier via ntg-context <ntg-context@ntg.nl<mailto:ntg-context@ntg.nl>> a écrit :

Hi,

I’m using tabulate for parallel texts (source and translation next to each other). The top of each table should consist of only one cell covering both columns with centered content. Is that possible?

A HTML equivalent will look roughly like this:

<table>
  <tr>
    <th colspan="2">Manuscript XY </th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>Some text in Greek or Hebrew or whatever</td>
    <td>This is the translation</td>
  </tr>
</table>

With ConteXt I’d like to do something like this

\starttabulate[|p(1.2cm)|p(1.2cm)|]
  \NC Manuscript XY \NR
  \NC  Some text in Greek or Hebrew or whatever
  \NC  This is the translation \NC \NR
\stoptabulate

This compiles (interestingly?), but the cells at the top aren’t merged.

Any ideas ?

I know that natural tables offer more in this regard, but those seem not to be so well suited for parallel texts.

I switched to natural tables a long time ago and that's how I would do it:

\starttext
\bTABLE[width=8cm, frame=off]
\setupTABLE[c][1][roffset=0.5em]
\setupTABLE[c][2][loffset=0.5em]
\bTR
          \bTD[nc=2, align=center, bottomframe=on] Manuscript XY \eTD
\eTR\bTR
\bTD
          Some text in Greek or Hebrew or whatever.

          The text can comprise multiple paragraphs.
          Or even lists and other goodies :
          \startitemize[intro, packed]
          \item first item
          \item second item
          \stopitemize
\eTD\bTD
          This is the translation
\eTD
\eTR
\eTABLE
\stoptext

I haven't seen drawbacks with parallel texts (yet) and I found natural tables very flexible.

Hope it helps,

--
Jean-Philippe Rey
jean-philippe.rey@centralesupelec.fr<mailto:jean-philippe.rey@centralesupelec.fr>
91192 Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex - France
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