Re: Table questions

[Carsten Dominik <dominik@science.uva.nl>]

On Dec 14, 2006, at 17:19, Michael wrote:

>
> I recently started using org-mode and love its table feature.  Here 
> are some
> questions that I have:
>
> 1. In table calculation, how to refer to a cell in a different column 
> and
>    different row?  Specifically, I want column 8 row 5 to be the ratio 
> of
>    column 7 row 5 and column 7 row 4.

You cannot, at least currently.  I am not sure how well this would
work, because the table editor makes it very easy to swap rows, columns,
to add and delete columns, and such references would become invalid
unless one would carefully track these changes.  There is a limit
of what is still reasonable with the concept of org-mode tables.
If you want to create really complicated tables, maybe you are better 
off
with a link to another file in which you use SES, or even Excel.

Having said this, I do want to do a bit more in this direction, but
this is nowhere near completion.

> 2. I think the table minor mode would be a fantastic tool in editing 
> tables
>    in a LaTeX file. I wonder whether it is possible to let orgtbl 
> recognize
>    \begin{tabular}\end{tabular} and use & as column delimiter rather 
> than |
>    (also respect end of line \\)?

Yes, I think it would and I have been thinking to make this possible.
However, once I allow this, people will want to use \multicolumn, and
this seems for me to be beyond the scope.

Have you tried

    M-x align-current RET

in a LaTeX table?  It does wonders.

- Carsten