Customized tabular environment

Question

we've quite often have to write tables in our CI layout (colors, borders, fonts, etc). At the moment we use the standard tabular environment with lots of extra instructions (in the environment parameters as well as individual cells).

I'd like to code my own environment, which handles everything on its own, so I can simply type it like that:

\begin{myTable}{lll}
    head a &  head b  & head c \\
    data a1 & data b1 & datac1 \\
    data a2 & data b2 & datac2 \\
    ...
\edd{myTable}

And this will automatically produce my CI-formatted table (eg. including horizontal line under head, specific colors for head and body cells, etc, etc).

Could anyone please enlighten me on how do that ?

thx.

http://meta.tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1436/welcome-to-tex-sx It is really hard to guess what you would like to accomplish. Please provide more details and a MWE — Martin - マーチン, Aug 15 '13 at 16:10
Good question! It sounds quite similar to How to separate table content and table style In particular, the pgfplotstable package could very well be what you're looking for- my answer to this question gives a little demonstration, and there's the excellent manual to study too :) — cmhughes, Aug 15 '13 at 16:24

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 16 '13 at 13:36

Separation of content and design was a major issue in developing the cals package. The cals tables are verbose, but it allows to add hooks for decorations.

calstable in designs

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{cals}
\usepackage{xcolor}
\begin{document}
\makeatletter

%
% The table.
%
\newcommand\mktable{%
\begin{calstable}
\colwidths{{12mm}{12mm}}
\alignR
\thead{
\brow \cell{$\phantom{n^2}n$} \cell{$n^2$} \erow
}
\brow \cell{1} \cell{1} \erow
\brow \cell{2} \cell{4} \erow
\brow \cell{3} \cell{9} \erow
\brow \cell{4} \cell{16} \erow
\brow \cell{5} \cell{25} \erow
\end{calstable}
}

%
% Display the table in the default design
%
\noindent Default design\par\smallskip
\mktable

\bigskip

%
% Implement the corpodate design
%
\let\calstable@old=\calstable
\let\thead@old=\thead
\newcommand\setbodycolor{\def\cals@bgcolor{gray}}
\newcommand\setheadcolor{\def\cals@bgcolor{blue}}

\renewcommand\calstable{\calstable@old
\def\cals@bodyrs@width{1mm}
\cals@setpadding{\vbox to 6mm{}}
\setbodycolor}

\renewcommand\thead[1]{\setheadcolor
\thead@old{#1}
\setbodycolor}

%
% Display the table in the corporate design
%
\noindent Corporate design\par\smallskip
\mktable

\end{document}

Customized tabular environment

1 Answers1