After sleeping on this I realize that a more mechanistical answer to this may be more interesting. When coding a table in LaTeX with 'booktabs' as the one shown in http://www.idyll.org:8081/JohSite/context/table1.jpg/view, booktabs mainly provides the commands '\bottomrule' and '\toprule', creating the heavier start and end lines. The interrupted lines separating the table header from the table body are coded explicitly (with a command I'm not sure is even provided by 'booktabs'): '\cmidrule(r){1-1}\cmidrule(lr){2-2}\cmidrule(l {3-3}' for a three-columned table. Bottomline is that while with the distance solution in ConTeXt natural TABLEs the whole table is modified, a solution like this only modifies the horizontal line targeted - and that very flexible: the firs '\cmidrule' call anly shortens the rule on the right ('(r)'), the second one on both sides ('(lr)') and the last one on the left ('(l)'). In order to emulate my table style with TABLE there would be 4 things necessary: 1) possibility to have top- and bottomframe formated independently (different width - top heavy, bottom light; one continuous, one interrupted (see 2.)) 2) a new frame mode ('int'?) which interrupts a 'bottomframe=int' between table columns with an automatism recognizing whether this is the first or last column and only shortening the line on the right or left respectively. 3) Booktabs also provides an '\addlinespace' command for groupseparation ... see separation between first and second body line in http://www.idyll.org:8081/JohSite/context/table1.jpg/view 4) When defining tables in LaTeX, a definition like \tabular{@{}lll@{}} yields horizontal lines terminating on the left and right flush with the table content and not reaching to a column separation border beyond that. If you wonder where I got all theses crazy ideas ;0): http://www.tug.org/tex-archive/info/german/tabsatz/tabsatz.pdf by Axel Reichert is the inspiring document (sorry - German only). I'm not asking for this to be implemented, but I believe ConTeXt would benefit from this. Joh Hans Hagen wrote:
Johannes Graumann wrote:
Hello,
In my quest for tables similar to what the 'booktabs' package in LaTeX
what does booktab do then
Hans
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