Re: Bold rules with TABLE

["Mojca Miklavec" <mojca.miklavec.lists@gmail.com>]

On 8/17/06, Fredrik Sjunnesson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> As this is my first mail to the list I'd like to start by thanking Hans
> and all other ConTeXt contributors. I stumbled upon ConTeXt just
> recently and I have fallen in love badly. :)
>
> Now to my question.
>
> Is it possible to control the rule thickness of a specific frames with
> TABLE, i.e. something like
>
>         \setupTABLE[row][1][bottomframe=1pt]
>         \setupTABLE[column][1][leftframe=2pt]
>
> If not, I'd guess it could be possible to fake this by inserting extra
> rows and columns with zero height and width, respectively, and use the
> rulethickness parameter to change the thickness of all their frames.
> Since this approach would add extra complexity to the table definitions
> I hope that you have better solutions.

Unless I have missed something (I would be glad if I would), there is
no support for that yet.

You could either do:
    \setupTABLE[row][1][frame=off,bottomframe=on,rulethickness=1pt]
or
    \setupTABLE[column][1][leftframe=on,rulethickness=2pt]
but none of that is what you really want.

Table building macros depend highly on \framed. And there are at least
two feature requests I know of that have been around for quite some
time now:

1. Support for setting different
leftoffset/rightoffset/topoffset/bottomoffset (natural tables look
ugly to me just because they have too little left/rightoofset and too
big top/bottomoffset)

Framedcontent supports that already, but cannot be used as a
replacement in tables.

2. Support for different line widths (or colors or whatever) for
left/right/top/bottom line. Some special care should be taken on
borders of course.

There is a workaround for your problem though: you can draw a frame in
metapost (where you can draw arbitrary lines around the cell) and then
use that frame as a background for the cells, but that's an extremely
lengthy and cumbersome solution for such a standard and well-defined
need.

I would vote for both of the features if Hans or someone else would
manage to implement them. One of the problems might be that \framed is
used very often and it is not desireble to have too much overhelm in
it, but I would really be very happy if functionality like that would
be made available for the usage in tables.

Mojca