Hello Hans, [LaTeX tables]
what exactly are you missing?
There is a good file that pretty much describes what I am missing (perhaps haven't found in a manual - I never looked that close): http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/booktabs/booktabs.pdf There are commands like \toprule, \midrule, \bottomrule that insert horizontal rules with different thickness (default values, optional ones can be added with [..] right after the command). Eckhart has sent an example in his first post. To get a horizontal rule from column a to column b you can (in LaTeX) use: \cmidrule[<wd>](<trim>){a–b} where wd is the rulethickness, trim is where to cut off a bit, and a, b the columns. This is a very nice command that I often use. \addlinespace addes a little space between rows. Table preambles can be complicated... but the next one is pretty simple: \begin{tabular}{@{}rll*{22}cv{40em}@{}} means: to the left of the table, there should be no whitespace (i.e. the leftmost glyph of the table should be tight to the preceding glyph) now, there is a right aligned column, two left aligned, 22 centered columns and one type "v" and to the right there should be no whitespace either. The column type v is defined like this \newcolumntype{v}[1]{>{\raggedright\hspace{0pt}}p{#1}} Ragged right but so that the first word can be hyphenated. Or another columntype could be: \newcolumntype{R}[1]{%
{\begin{turn}{90}\begin{minipage}[t][0pt]{#1}\smalltabsize\raggedright\hspace{0pt}}l% <{\end{minipage}\end{turn}}% }
that would lead to rotated raggedright text in a smaller font. I know that ConTeXt tables have a lot of features that LaTeX tables don't have. Patrick -- ConTeXt wiki: http://contextgarden.net