Tables Overview
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< Visuals | Structurals >
ConTeXt has a whole bunch of possibilities to typeset tables. Not each provides everything you may need.
- Tabulate (tabulation, recommended for simple requirements)
- TABLE (natural tables, HTML tables, recommended)
- xtables (extreme tables – mostly compatible to natural tables, better for page breaking)
- framed tables (for simple tables that span hundreds of pages)
Older ones:
- Table (TaBlE, deprecated)
- Tables (multipage TaBlE, deprecated)
- Linetable ("new" multipage tables, experimental and probably obsolete)
Note that you can use natural and extreme tables with the old Table/Tabulate syntax. (To make this even more confusing...)
If you have simple tables with lots of contents, and you're tired of typing \bTR\bTD
s or \NC\NR
s, you can also have a look at
- database module and its manual.
- wikitable, a TABLE wrapper that uses MediaWiki syntax
- ConTeXt basics for users: Table macros and Table macros II by Aditya Mahajan (2007 and 2008).
Features
Feature | Tabulate | Table | Tables | TABLE | Linetable | xtables |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
horizonal lines | \HL | \HL | \HL | \setupTABLE [topframe=on] or \setupTABLE [bottomframe=on] |
unknown | yes |
vertical lines | \VL | \VL | \VL | \setupTABLE [leftframe=on] or \setupTABLE [rightframe=on] |
unknown | yes |
multipage | yes | no | yes | yes, with split=yes or split=repeat | yes, even horizontally | yes |
repeated header | \setuptabulate [header=repeat] \starttabulatehead ... \stoptabulateheadonly one line |
no | \setuptables [split=repeat] \starttablehead ... \stoptablehead |
\bTABLE [split=repeat] \bTABLEhead ... \eTABLEhead |
yes | yes |
repeated footer | no | no | \setuptables [split=repeat] \starttabletail ... \stoptabletail |
no | no | yes |
automatic fitting to given table width | no | \SetTableToWidth | \SetTableToWidth |
\setupTABLE [option=stretch, textwidth=10cm] |
unknown | default |
problems | very limited | limited | \starttext \starttablehead \HL \stoptablehead \starttables[|l|l|] \dorecurse{50}{% \VL SomeText \VL SomeText \VL \AR} \stoptables Problem: top margin on first page is bigger. \stoptext |
there may be problems in width and height calculation and perhaps the multipage features | experimental, nearly no documentation | very verbose |
documentation (except wiki) | contextref.pdf, tabl-tbl.mkii, MAPS article | ms-cb-en.pdf, tabl-tab.mkii | tabl-tab.mkii | enattab.pdf, NaturalTables.pdf, tabl-ntb.mkii / tabl-ntb.mkiv | tabl-ltb.mkii / tabl-ltb.mkiv | xtables-mkiv.pdf, tabl-xtb.lua |