Aditya Mahajan wrote:

On Sun, 8 Mar 2009, Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

...

Hi Hans,

natural tables are perfect to create tables with a fixed size for the cells but the syntax requires sometimes a lot of typing for small content and takes to many lines of code in the document.

less code and more efficient too ... can you test this? \def\startTABLE {\dosingleempty\dostartTABLE} \def\dostartTABLE[#1]% {\bgroup \bTABLE[#1]% \let\NC\doTABLENC \let\NR\doTABLENR \let\bTR\relax \let\bTD\relax \let\bTH\relax \let\bTN\relax} \def\stopTABLE {\eTABLE \egroup} \newconditional\inTABLEnc \unexpanded\def\doTABLENR {\eTR \setfalse\inTABLEnc} \unexpanded\def\doTABLENC {\futurelet\next\dodoTABLENC} \def\dodoTABLENC {\ifx\next\doTABLENR \else \expandafter\dododoTABLENC \fi} \long\def\dododoTABLENC#1\NC {\ifconditional\inTABLEnc\else\settrue\inTABLEnc\parseTR[][]\fi \parseTD[][]#1\eTD\NC} watch the relaxing of the b commands, so that we catch mixed usage Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

John Devereux wrote:

Hans Hagen writes:

[...]

Hi Hans,

Is there any possible way to use the wiki-style tables like:

^ Heading 1 ^ Heading 2 ^ | Item 1 | Item 2 | | Item 3 | Item 4 |

(Probably with some wrapper)

Perhaps this boils down to asking if it is possible to (re)define "special" characters, within a region of text.

doing that in the running text is asking for troubles (catcode mess) if there is real interest in that kind of stuff we can make a module that does something \starttext \startluacode function commands.wiki_to_table(str) -- wrong namespace str = string.gsub(str,"%^ *[\n\r]","\\NC\\NR\n") str = string.gsub(str,"%^","\\NC ") str = string.gsub(str,"| *[\n\r]","\\NC\\NR\n") str = string.gsub(str,"|","\\NC ") tex.sprint(tex.ctxcatcodes,"\\startTABLE") tex.sprint(tex.ctxcatcodes,str) tex.sprint(tex.ctxcatcodes,"\\stopTABLE") end \stopluacode \def\startwikitable {\bgroup \obeylines \dostartwikitable} \long\def\dostartwikitable#1\stopwikitable {\ctxlua{commands.wiki_to_table([[\detokenize{#1}]])}% \egroup} \startwikitable ^ Heading 1 ^ Heading 2 ^ | Item 1 | Item 2 | | Item 3 | Item 4 | \stopwikitable \startTABLE \NC Text 1 \NC Text 2 \NC \NR \NC Text 3 \NC Text 4 \NC \NR \stopTABLE \stoptext ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 4:10 PM, John Devereux wrote:

[...] I find that writing documents for context - once you get used to it - is much nicer than using a wordprocessor.

But the process of entering tables remains tedious and error prone, compared to e.g. the Word equivalent that many will be used to.

Many of my tables are results from some numerical computation, I usually write a short program to print the data in the required ConTeXt/LaTeX format. The others I try to find some similar existing table and update the text. -- George N. White III Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia

On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 19:03, John Devereux wrote:

Hans Hagen writes:

[...]

Hi Hans,

Is there any possible way to use the wiki-style tables like:

^ Heading 1 ^ Heading 2 ^ | Item 1    | Item 2 | | Item 3    | Item 4 |

(Probably with some wrapper)

Perhaps this boils down to asking if it is possible to (re)define "special" characters, within a region of text.

Hans already answered your question for mkiv. To a certain degree that's already implemented in the database module that also works with mkii (http://wiki.contextgarden.net/m-database) and sometimes a bit buggy, but it works. You may take a look at that one. Mojca

Wolfgang Schuster wrote:

\long\def\dododoTABLENC#1\NC {\ifconditional\inTABLEnc\else\settrue\inTABLEnc\parseTR[][]\fi \dodoubleempty\parseTD#1\eTD\NC}

I want to be able to give argument with \NC too, it's important for me to be able to use spanned columns/rows in the simple form.

i had that but then considered it kind of contraditing the simple setup anyhow, i changed it ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------