Derivatives and Integrals: An Annotated Discourse

Section 13 Table Calisthenics

A very minimal table, hence with left-justified cells, no borders. We do wrap the tabular element in a table element to get centering, numbering and a caption. Footnotes inside cells are tested here.

Note that tables may be constructed using the LaTeX Complex Table Editor tool online at latex-tables.comand then exported in PreTeXt syntax.

Tables can be used and abused many ways. We describe long division of polynomials by using vertical and horizontal borders on individual entries of a <tabular>. The division lines are slightly thicker than the subtraction lines. This is a good example of the typical abuse of tables for horizontal and vertical layout. At least we have called it a “Figure,” not a “Table”.

An example of aligning table cells' contents horizontally. See the source for comments.

Example from above, but now with horizontal rules, plus an extra row to test the bottom border. See the source for comments.

For a table without a caption, create a <tabular> and place it directly within the current division. This will allow control over the horizontal placment, but without a caption, there is no number, and the tabular cannot be cross-referenced.

Same example as before, but now with vertical rules. See the source for comments.

A list whose first item is a table. In LaTeX output a \leavevmode is necessary to keep this organized (item number, then table as content).

1. 1111, 2222		3333
   aaaa	bbbb,cccc
   AAAA	BBBB	CCCC

A bare minimum table (one row with one cell) to test edge cases:

Table cells with a fixed width where text wraps are known as “paragraph cells”. A cell will be created as a paragraph cell if and only if it has <p> children. And such cells should only have <p> children. The width of a paragraph cell is determined by a width attribute on the corresponding <col> (as a percentage). If no width is specified (or there isn't even a <col> in the first place) then xsltproc will abort. If the column has a non-paragraph cell with contents that are wider than the paragraph cells, results will be undesirable. There is presently no implementation for a paragraph cell that has a colspan greater than \(1\text{,}\) although cells with colspan greater than \(1\) that are above or below a paragraph cell will behave. Setting width on a <col> that has no paragraph cells may produce unexpected results. A valign for the parent <row> (or the ambient <tabular>) can control vertical alignment (top, middle, or bottom). A paragraph cell's halign attribute (left, center, right, or justify) controls how the text is justfied. Cells inherit halign from <row>, <col>, and <tabular> in that order of preference. In a non-paragraph cell where halign='justify', the horizontal alignment will match the behavior of halign='left'.

Table cells can have multiline content using <line> elements. This is not the same thing as a paragraph cell—line breaking will happen precisely where the author tells it to. A <line> will not break, even on a narrow screen. If a cell uses a <line>, it must only use a sequence of <line>s and no other content. As with paragraph cells, you can use a valign attribute for the row.

This is a table torture test with many combinations of halign, valign, colspan, <p> children, and <line> children.

And now a <sidebyside> with a <table> and a <tabular> to check that width is scaled appropriately. See Section 23 to learn about <sidebyside>s.

Tables are formed in LaTeX output with copious use of the \multicolumn macro to override more global alignment settings, and to spread the content of one cell across several columns. However, sometimes LaTeX's special characters have behaved badly in this situation. So the table below, two items per row, is just designed for LaTeX testing. But of course, it should still render fine in other formats. The three test cases are from 8.8, but without 50 alphabetic characters and 8 digits, which should not be problems in this context. In order to test the use of a percent sign (%) in a URL, we follow it by two hex digits, specifically, 58, which is a way to represent the character X in a URL. The first column's entries are forced to be wrapped in a \multicolumn by specifying their horizontal alignment. The second column's entries will not be wrapped in a \multicolumn.So the two columns will look identical, other than the first having a left alignment, and the second has the default center alignment. (This table is known to render poorly in a Jupyter notebook. The cause is four dollar signs present in rows 1 and 3, and is explained in Subsection 8.12.)

Now, the same table repeatedly, but with different headers. No care has been taken with alignment or rules, which could improve how these look.

The next table has a progression of thicker rules in the header, plus a progression of thicker rules across the columns. For testing, not for aesthetics.