Jim schrieb am 25.01.2024 um 22:01:
Hi Henning,
On Thu, Jan 25, 2024 at 17:16 (+0100), Henning Hraban Ramm wrote:
Am 25.01.24 um 16:12 schrieb Jim:
Hi, I was wondering if anyone here could help me with these three things: For a long time I have been using Wichura's TaBle macros (i.e., what one gets with \input table in plain TeX) and would like to use what appears to be ConTeXt's version of those (i.e., what one gets with \starttable ... \stoptable).
However, https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Command/starttable says The environment \starttable ... \stoptable is and (sic) old and nearly obsolete way to handle tabular material Q1: are there plans to remove \starttable ... \endtable from ConTeXt any time "soon", or is that wiki comment gratuitously pessimistic?
Hans suggests to use tabulate as long as it fits. I just gave that a try, using the same syntax as \starttable:
\starttable[|c|c|] \HL \VL \bf Year \VL \bf Citizens \VL\SR \HL \VL 1675 \VL ˜428 \VL\FR \VL 1795 \VL 1124 \VL\MR \VL 1880 \VL 2405 \VL\MR \VL 1995 \VL 7408 \VL\LR \HL \stoptable
\starttabulate[|c|c|] \HL \VL \bf Year \VL \bf Citizens \VL\SR \HL \VL 1675 \VL ˜428 \VL\FR \VL 1795 \VL 1124 \VL\MR \VL 1880 \VL 2405 \VL\MR \VL 1995 \VL 7408 \VL\LR \HL \stoptabulate
While tabulate produced a table with the above input, it needs some work to make the table look good. (The columns are too narrow, the vrules don't meet the hrules, ...).
Perhaps these can be fixed with some tweaking, but I notice that in all of https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Command/starttabulate and https://wiki.contextgarden.net/Tabulate and http://www.ntg.nl/maps/22/28.pdf there is a conspicuous lack of examples with vrules. And the tables in the (at least) the starttabulate wiki page which use vrules don't use tabulate to create the tables.
Coincidence? I think not. :-)
Table which rely on rules to make the content readable have a serious problem (read Edward Tufte books how you can improve the visual style) but the better alternative in this case are either natural tables or extreme tables. Below is a example which uses the table like wrapper for natural tables which makes adding rules and changing the padding around text very simple because each table cell is a \framed block with all its options. \starttext \startsetups[ruledtable] \setupTABLE [frame=off,align=middle,loffset=.5em,roffset=.5em] \setupTABLE [column] [each] [leftframe=on,rightframe=on] \setupTABLE [row] [first] [topframe=on,bottomframe=on,foregroundstyle=bold] \setupTABLE [row] [last] [bottomframe=on] \stopsetups \startTABLE[setups=ruledtable] \NC Year \NC Citizens \NC\NR \NC 1675 \NC ˜428 \NC\NR \NC 1795 \NC 1124 \NC\NR \NC 1880 \NC 2405 \NC\NR \NC 1995 \NC 7408 \NC\NR \stopTABLE \stoptext Wolfgang