[Tex/LaTex] Controlling cell width and height simultaneously in a table

horizontal alignmenttablesvertical alignment

I'm trying to create a multi-page table with all cells having the same height (as well as certain fixed widths) so that certain manual cut-and-paste operations are a lot easier. One issue is that one column in particular is text-heavy and should line-break within the cell. As I don't want it justified, I looked into alternatives such as Fixed column-width table with text left-aligned in cells. This is doing exactly what I want for horizontal alignment.

For vertical alignment, I've looked at How to specify a fixed height for all rows in a table? and the \vphantom method detailed in the above link doesn't seem to be working.

Here's what I'm currently working with:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array}

\newcolumntype{P}[1]{>{\raggedright\hspace{0pt}\arraybackslash}p{#1}}
\def\Z{\vphantom{\parbox[c]{1.7in}{\Huge Something Long}}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{| c || P{0.5in} || P{0.5in} || P{5in} |}\hline

1.  \Z &&& Long long long long long long long long long
            long long long long long long long text  \\\hline
2.  \Z &&& More long long long long long long long long
            long long long long long long long text  \\\hline
\end{tabular}

When I compile, the cells do not have a uniform height, and none of them are as large as 1.7 inches vertically. So this suggests that somehow the \vphantom method is failing.

Does anybody know of a relatively straightforward solution to this problem?

Best Answer

In this example each cell has a height of 3cm:

enter image description here

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array,ragged2e}

\newcolumntype{P}[1]{>{\RaggedRight\hspace{0pt}}p{#1}}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{| >{\rule{0pt}{3cm}}c || P{0.5in} || P{0.5in} || P{3in} |}\hline

1. &&& Long long long long long long long long long
            long long long long long long long text  \\\hline
2. &&& More long long long long long long long long
            long long long long long long long text  \\\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Producing a column with rotated text in all cells

You could use an option for customizing the origin of the rotation, such as \rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{...}

The manually added vertical space at the end of the rows destroys the aligment. see how it looks without:

\documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{document}

\scriptsize
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{0.2em}
\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{!{\vrule width 1pt}
    p{0.3cm} !{\vrule width 1pt} p{0.5cm} | p{4cm} | X !{\vrule
    width 1pt}}
\noalign{\hrule height 1pt}
\multirow{4}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Ten}}&
    \multirow{2}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Eight}}
    & One & Two\\\cline{3-4}
& & Three & Four\\\cline{2-4}
&\multirow{2}{*}{\rotatebox[origin=c]{90}{Nine}}
& Five & Six\\ \cline{3-4}
& & \multicolumn{2}{ l !{\vrule width 1pt}}{Seven}\\
\noalign{\hrule height 1pt}
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

enter image description here

If you make such manual adjustments, which multirow doesn't know about, you can use the optional fixup argument of \multirow for correction:
```
\multirow{nrows}[bigstruts]{width}[fixup]{text}
```
For automatic rotating, I would use >{...} and >{...} of the array package together with a sideways environment of the rotating package, such as
```
>{\begin{sideways}}p{0.3cm}<{\end{sideways}}
```

or even define a new column type for it:

\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\begin{sideways}}p{#1}<{\end{sideways}}}

Here's the example showing automatic rotation, but without multirow, since this would not work as intended as it's applied after rotation:

\documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{lmodern}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{rotating}
\newcolumntype{R}[1]{>{\begin{sideways}}p{#1}<{\end{sideways}}}
\begin{document}
\scriptsize
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{0.2em}
\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{!{\vrule width 1pt}
    R{0.3cm} !{\vrule width 1pt} R{0.5cm} | p{4cm} | X !{\vrule
    width 1pt}}
\noalign{\hrule height 1pt}
Ten & Eight
& One & Two\\\cline{3-4}
& & Three & Four\\\cline{2-4}
& Nine
& Five & Six\\ \cline{3-4}
& & \multicolumn{2}{ l !{\vrule width 1pt}}{Seven}\\
\noalign{\hrule height 1pt}
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

[Tex/LaTex] Top-aligned table cells with different font sizes and controlled spacing

A cell always start with a strut, precisely \@arstrut, which is meant to help in alignment. The \Huge letters in the first column are higher than this strut, so they are set touching the upper margin. This doesn't happen for the second column cells. A trick can be to provide a fake first line and then backing up by its height, which we know precisely to be the height of the strut. Then we insert no interline glue.

However this won't work with a nested tabular.

\documentclass[paper=a4,fontsize=11pt]{scrartcl} % KOMA-article class

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel} % English language/hyphenation
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{array,tabularx}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\pagestyle{empty} % No pagenumbers/headers/footers

\makeatletter
\newcolumntype{A}[1]{>{\kern-\ht\@arstrutbox\hrule height 0pt}p{#1}}
\newcolumntype{V}{%
  >{\csname par\endcsname\kern-\ht\@arstrutbox\nointerlineskip\hrule height0pt
  \mbox{}\csname par\endcsname\kern-\ht\@arstrutbox\nointerlineskip
  \vrule height\fontcharht\font`A width0pt\relax}X}
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{
  @{}
  A{3em}
  V
  @{}} % @{} is used to remove the margins from cells
\Huge\bfseries A
& 
Lorem ipsum \hfill right-aligned\newline
sem.\newline
Lorem\newline
ipsum \\ 
\Huge\bfseries B & a \\ 
\Huge\bfseries C & \lipsum*[1] \\ 
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

enter image description here

As far as the interrow spacing is concerned, I'm afraid that it's outside the tabular model of LaTeX.

Here's a different implementation, where the big letters are shifted down:

\documentclass[paper=a4,fontsize=11pt]{scrartcl} % KOMA-article class

\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel} % English language/hyphenation
\usepackage[showframe]{geometry}
\usepackage{array,tabularx,adjustbox}
\usepackage{lipsum}

\pagestyle{empty} % No pagenumbers/headers/footers

\newcommand{\bigletter}[1]{%
  \raisebox{\dimexpr-\height+\fontcharht\font`A\relax}{\Huge\bfseries #1}%
}

\makeatletter
\makeatother

\begin{document}
\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{
  @{}
  p{3em}
  X
  @{}} % @{} is used to remove the margins from cells
\bigletter{A}
& 
Lorem ipsum \hfill right-aligned\newline
sem.\newline
Lorem\newline
ipsum \\ 
\bigletter{B} & a \\ 
\bigletter{C} & \lipsum*[1] \\ 
\end{tabularx}
\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Producing a column with rotated text in all cells

[Tex/LaTex] Top-aligned table cells with different font sizes and controlled spacing

Related Question