[Tex/LaTex] How to decrease the font size of a table in an \input file

external filesfontsizetables

I have:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\begin{document}
This is the main tex document.
\input{tables}
\end{document}

In the tables.tex file, I only have numerical tables. I want to decrease the size of fonts used in the table, without modifying tables.tex. Is there proper commands that I can enter right before \input{tables}?

FYI, tables.tex looks like:

\begin{table}[htbp]
\caption{table caption}
\begin{tabular}{rr}
$u$   & 0.00  
\end{tabular}
\end{table}

Best Answer

This works for me:

{\renewcommand\normalsize{\tiny}%
\normalsize
\input{tables}}

Related Solutions

LaTeX Syntax – Using Column Separator & Inside \newenvironment

The problem is that the \begin{...} and \end{...} pair commands automatically create a "group" so that, in effect, the & and \\ are "out of scope" for the tabular, while inside the "production" environment they just show up at a place where the compiler is not expecting them.

A second problem with your definitions is that, even if they would work, they would be adding an extra \\ at the end of the tabular, adding an unwanted space at the end. Perhaps some more appropriate definitions would be

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{article}

\newcommand{\production}[1]{#1 ::= &}
\newenvironment{grammar}{\tabular{p{3cm}l}}{\endtabular}

\begin{document}
\begin{grammar}
\production{XmlStartTag} ... \\
\production{XmlOtherTag} ... \\
\production{XmlEndTag} ...
\end{grammar}
\end{document}

Note no \\ at the end of the last production. Also in the definition of the grammar you don't need to repeat the work of \begin/\end, and you can instead directly use \tabular and \endtabular.

KOMA-Script Font Size – How to Change the Font Size with KOMA-Script?

You mention "tables that have been created to fit exactly 11pt before". If you didn't receive "dozens of warnings" then, I suppose you created those tables using the (default) 11pt document class option. This option, however, is not identical to issuing \changefontsizes{11pt}:

With the 11pt option, you load the file scrsize11pt.clo which, among other things, includes the definition of the various font size switching commands. (\normalsize, BTW, issues \@setfontsize\normalsize\@xipt{13.6}, with \@xipt translating into 10.95, not 11pt.) All those commands use point sizes which are available in the (non-scalable) default font Computer Modern.
With \changefontsizes{11pt} OTOH, \normalsize features a point size of exactly 11pt, and the point size of all other switching commands is calculated based on that of \normalsize. Because of that, size substitutions become necessary with Computer Modern, and this is what the "dozens of warnings" are about.

The solution is to use a scalable font (e.g., Latin Modern) instead of Computer Modern. This will relase you from all but one warning (from the class, "Using fallback calculation to set up font sizes"). (If you're daring, issue \makeatletter\input{scrsize11pt.clo}\makeatother inside floats, but .clo files weren't designed to be loaded mid-document, so no guarantees.)

Best Answer

Related Solutions

LaTeX Syntax – Using Column Separator & Inside \newenvironment

KOMA-Script Font Size – How to Change the Font Size with KOMA-Script?

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