On 9/9/2013 9:13 AM, Procházka Lukáš Ing. - Pontex s. r. o. wrote:
Hello,
just one user's point of view:
There are many table-creating commands.
Some of them are deprecated and only supported for backward compatibility.
they are not deprecated at all - table: a rather traditional, close to tex alignment mechanism - tabulate: quite good for text, breaks across pages nicely, i use that one myself most of the time (i might redo it one time) - TABLE: to some extend html compatible, originally meant for uise in combination with xml, but also useable in tex (somewhat slow) - xtable: a follow up on TABLE (with some strong points but also some limitations)
It seemed to me till now that natural tables (provided by \...TABLE... commands) were best choice as they are versatile, they have friendly setup, they may be split over more pages (with repeating header/footer) and (almost each feature) may be specified individually for row, column or even cell.
It seemed to that nothing more user might wish.
i must admit that i only use it in combination with xml -)
(And - as "more complicated", i.e. more typing to enter them, Lua helps in this situation.)
Now, we have xtables which have the same functionality as TABLEs, or a bit more. But - (?) xtables have a bit "poorer" setup options (so far? - By Wolfgang's answer).
hm, in fact the configuration options are better; it doesn't have the x,y setup but named rows, cells and row/cellgroups are quite ok
Do you plan to add something equivalent to \setupTABLE[<row>][<column>][<settings>] because xtables lack the function to set values for certain rows/columns.
not on the agenda (one can use symbolic names of setups which is more powerful that hard coded numbers)
Wolfgang
The "more" is - named cells? Faster rendering?
IMHO - wouldn't be better to extend TABLEs to be as good as xtables (i.e. - add named cells)?
no, as it would be even slower .. i also tend not to touch TABLE to much as it is used in workflows that demand stability
Or to unify xtables and TABLEs - make xtables and TABLEs have the same functionality and options, and make their names/commands synonyms?
- When I started using Ctx, there were so many tabling commands and I always had to compare their possibilities to select one; and to check whether the chosen "tabler" is not deprecated.
So I ended up with TABLEs (and Lua).
Now, it seems to me that TABLEs will become deprecated, being replaced with xtables...
it will never be deprecated but i might have missed an announcement -) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | voip: 087 875 68 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------