From: "Juan Manuel Macías" <maciaschain@posteo.net>
To: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
Cc: orgmode <emacs-orgmode@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Syntax Proposal: Multi-line Table Cells/Text Wrapping
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2021 11:40:40 +0100 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87wnu2yuon.fsf@posteo.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <8735wqn55u.fsf@gmail.com> (Tim Cross's message of "Sat, 20 Mar 2021 08:33:04 +1100")
Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com> writes:
> It has also been stated that the Latex exporter won't be a problem as
> tabularx (and other Latex packages) will just handle this. Sadly, I
> don't think it is that simple. I have used that package a lot over the
> years and there have been times I've had to render tables with
> multiple columns and rows. While the various latex table like packages
> do provide a much better outcome for tables with more complex cell
> structure, it is rare that you don't need to do a fair amount of
> tweaking to actually get good looking complex tables. Handling a cell
> with a couple of lines may be fine, but it is very easy to hit the
> limits of what the package can handle without some tweaking. This is
> where I think things begin to fall down. My suspicion is that the
> amount of work needed to make the Latex exporter handle the majority
> of common use cases for this new syntax is much larger and more
> complex than it seems and getting this to work reliably and
> consistently will be extremely difficult.
tabularx does a fairly acceptable job out of the box on tables whose
cells have complex or 'multi-line' content, such as paragraphs. But,
naturally, it all depends on the context and scenarios: table, page
dimensions, book type and many more factors. The typography, when
demanding, is the art of exceptions. And I think this is valid even in
such an 'automated' tool like LaTeX (fortunately, LaTeX and TeX are also
very ductile, if you know the code well).
In any case, I agree that it would not be a good idea to translate the
LaTeX tabular environment, with all its nuances, to Org tables. In
addition to the fact that Org would be burdened with a unnecessary
complexity, is the fact that the syntax of both types of tables differ
essentially. Org tables have a more visual character; the tabular
environment is a pure "what you see is what you mean".
In a tabular environment I see no problem in writing something like
this row (ugly, but acceptable) in 3 lines:
#+begin_src latex
lorem & Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.
Donec hendrerit tempor tellus. Donec pretium posuere tellus. Proin
quam nisl, tincidunt et, mattis eget, convallis nec, purus & ipsum \\
#+end_src
But in an Org table I don't see how it could be done without messing up
the spirit of its syntax ... that's why I think (IMHO) the least
traumatic option, in cases where cells have 'a lot of content', is the
possibility of edit cells in a dedicated buffer, like this proof of
concept that I did:
https://lunotipia.juanmanuelmacias.com/edit-cell-sample-2021-03-19_09.29.17.mp4
And if the table is very complex then I don't see any other option than
writing directly the LaTeX code (in case the intended target is only
LaTeX/PDF).
Best regards,
Juan Manuel
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-03-20 10:41 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 33+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-03-17 20:29 Syntax Proposal: Multi-line Table Cells/Text Wrapping Atlas Cove
2021-03-17 21:02 ` Daniele Nicolodi
2021-03-17 22:07 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-18 13:38 ` Atlas Cove
2021-03-18 14:04 ` Daniele Nicolodi
2021-03-18 15:15 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-18 14:19 ` Maxim Nikulin
2021-03-18 14:26 ` Timothy
2021-03-18 14:31 ` Atlas Cove
2021-03-18 21:58 ` Tim Cross
2021-03-18 22:41 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 8:08 ` tomas
2021-03-19 8:44 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 8:53 ` tomas
2021-03-19 9:22 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 10:14 ` tomas
2021-03-19 10:53 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 11:08 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 13:43 ` tomas
2021-03-19 15:07 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-20 22:49 ` Samuel Wales
2021-03-21 8:43 ` Juan Manuel Macías
2021-03-19 2:27 ` Timothy
2021-03-19 3:50 ` Tim Cross
2021-03-19 4:02 ` Timothy
2021-03-19 13:33 ` Eric S Fraga
2021-03-19 21:33 ` Tim Cross
2021-03-20 9:19 ` Eric S Fraga
2021-03-20 10:40 ` Juan Manuel Macías [this message]
2021-03-20 13:41 ` Andreas Eder
2021-03-20 22:06 ` Tim Cross
2021-03-22 10:54 ` Eric S Fraga
2021-04-01 6:15 ` Tom Gillespie
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://www.orgmode.org/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87wnu2yuon.fsf@posteo.net \
--to=maciaschain@posteo.net \
--cc=emacs-orgmode@gnu.org \
--cc=theophilusx@gmail.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs/org-mode.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).