Dear devs, Natural Tables are quite handy but their syntax is a little verbose. \bTABLE \bTR \bTD ... \eTD \eTR \eTABLE There exist nice extensions which make the format less verbose by mapping \startTABLE \NC ... \NR\NR \stopTABLE back to the original macros. The new method for tables, called xtables, is faster and seems to have less problems than Natural Tables. However, the syntax is even more verbose \startxtable \startxrow \startxcell ... \stopxcell \stopxrow \stopxtable Can we have similar abbreviations as for Natural Tables? I am thinking of something like \startXTABLE \NC ... \NR\NR \stopXTABLE I tried myself rewriting tabl-nte.mkiv for xtables but it is not straightforward. What do you think of this proposal? Kind regards, Henri