Hi Pablo, Thank you, I thought that indicating width = 1.7cm, the
size of the cells would have been 1.7cm.
You’re correct and what Pablo meant is the textwidth option for natural
tables where you can set a width for the whole table.
The big space below the table in your example is a wrong calculation of
the cell height for the merged cells. The height is probably wrong
because ConTeXt uses the width of the first column (and not of all
merged cells) to determine the height.
When your goal of the merged cells is to create a caption for the table
you can use the “nonumber” keyword for placetable to get rid of the
label and counter of the float.
\starttext
\startplacetable[location={nonumber,right},title={A long title for this
short table}]
\startxtable[width=2cm]
\startxrow
\startxcell
Column 1
\stopxcell
\startxcell
Column 2
\stopxcell
\stopxrow
\stopxtable
\stopplacetable
\input knuth