On Mon, 3 Sep 2012, Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. wrote:

>> Natural tables have “odd” and “even” keywords for \setupTABLE but none in 
>> the way you like it. What I would do is to use a overlay in combination 
>> with metapost to create the background but there is no global register to 
>> access the current column/row of a cell, e.g. \currenttablecolumn (this 
>> name is already used by tables) and \currenttablerow.
>
> ... Maybe \currentTABLEcolumn (no collision with tables' \currenttablecolumn) 
> and \currentTABLErow could be defined for this purpose.

I agree. In addition, \currentTABLEheaderrow, \currentTABLEheadercolumn, 
\currentTABLEfooterrow, \currentTABLEfootercolumn, and the \max... version 
of all of these are also useful at the user level.

Aditya