Which table environment?

Which table environment?

[Felix Ingram]

Hello all,

I've been playing with the various table environments but I thought
I'd seek advice as to which would be the best for my requirements.

I need to be able to do the following:

- Repeating header row with coloured background and text (I can get
this working with TABLE but not tabulate).
- Multi-page tables (TABLE and tabulate are fine with these).
- Insert images in a cell (TABLE seems to handle this better than tabulate).
- Have rows that will split across pages - we will have large pieces
of text and images which will end up being taller than the page.
(tabulates paragraph support is the right sort of thing)
- Start next row on current page.
- Include other tables, lists etc in a cell (this is a "nice to have"
rather than a "must have")

The reason I need these various things is because Word acts this way
and I need to produce something similar (until we can argue for a
format change).

At the moment I'm leaning towards tabulate but I'm having issues with
images and the headers. I'm using Mk IV (bonus question: as a newbie,
should I just start with IV and ignore II? Or is II better for any
particular reason?).

Thanks in advance,

Felix
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Re: Which table environment?

[Wolfgang Schuster]

Am 11.01.2011 um 01:03 schrieb Felix Ingram:

> Hello all,
> 
> I've been playing with the various table environments but I thought
> I'd seek advice as to which would be the best for my requirements.
> 
> I need to be able to do the following:
> 
> - Repeating header row with coloured background and text (I can get
> this working with TABLE but not tabulate).

Tabulate supports background color for cells, Hans posted a example
last november.

Headers and footers are supported too, look for \starttabulatehead
and \starttabulatetail.

> - Multi-page tables (TABLE and tabulate are fine with these).
> - Insert images in a cell (TABLE seems to handle this better than tabulate).

Indeed.

> - Have rows that will split across pages - we will have large pieces
> of text and images which will end up being taller than the page.
> (tabulates paragraph support is the right sort of thing)

Correct, tabulate only feature.

> - Start next row on current page.

???

> - Include other tables, lists etc in a cell (this is a "nice to have"
> rather than a "must have")

TABLE

> The reason I need these various things is because Word acts this way
> and I need to produce something similar (until we can argue for a
> format change).

Use tabulate for text centric tables and TABLE for tables with a strict
layout and figures and other content (because you can set the cells
width and height).

> At the moment I'm leaning towards tabulate but I'm having issues with
> images and the headers. I'm using Mk IV (bonus question: as a newbie,
> should I just start with IV and ignore II? Or is II better for any
> particular reason?).


Use MkIV, the differences between both are not so big but for me there
are many minor things why i prefer MkIV over MkII.

Wolfgang

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maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
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