[Tex/LaTex] How to eliminate the blank space when using \cmidrule{} and \xcolor{} in a table

spacingtables

I have been struggling to find a way to eliminate the blank spaces (not colored) when using \cmidrule{} in a table.

MWE

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[table,dvipsnames]{xcolor}
\usepackage{adjustbox,booktabs,float,multirow}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}[H]
\centering
\begin{adjustbox}{max width=\textwidth}
\label{my-label}

\begin{tabular} {p{1.5cm}p{2cm}p{2cm}>{\columncolor{lred}}p{4cm}>{\columncolor{OliveGreen}}p{4cm}p{6cm}}\\\hline

\textbf{HQ {[}\%{]}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{Preparation}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{State}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\color{red}\textbf{POPC}}        & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\color{green}\textbf{DPPTE}}            & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{Comments}}    \\\hline                                                                                                                                                       
\multirow{4}{*}{1}                     & \multirow{2}{*}{Before rinsing}           & Non-oxidized                       & N/A                                                                                                                                                       & N/A                                &                              \\\cmidrule{3-6}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                 &                                                        & Oxidized                               & N/A                                                                                                                                                       & N/A                                 &                                                            \\\cmidrule{2-6}                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        & \multirow{2}{*}{After rinsing}             & Non-oxidized                       & See vesicles on surface which haven't ruptured                                                                                  & See vesicles on surface with no rupture          & I am pretty sure I was on the gold surface: vesicles were not moving and I had focused previously using BF mode                                                                                                                                                                               \\\cmidrule{3-6}                                                                                                                                                  
                                                &                                                           & Oxidized                            & See vesicles ruptured and agglomerations of "particles on surface". Cannot FRAP the background (checked to see if there is monolayer instead of bilayer). 
                                                                                                                                                                                    & See some patches, however these are not very big nor homogeneous patches. When performing FRAP photobleaching takes place and very slow recovery is seen.                                                                                                                                                                                                 & This is good hence the slow recovery, since it is much slower than on glass. However, the patches are not nice and big enough to get good enough data to be able to fit and calculate the diffusion coefficient.                                                                                                      \\ \hline


%% [rest of code]
\end{tabular}
\end{adjustbox}
\end{table}
\end{document}

Best Answer

The white strips are due to the padding around rules from booktabs. A way to remove them is to set this padding to 0, and replace it with a padding added to top and bottom of cells by the cellspace package in columns with specifier prefixed with the letter S (or C if you use siunitx):

 \documentclass{article}
\usepackage{colortbl}
    \usepackage[dvipsnames, svgnames, table]{xcolor} % Use colour!
    \usepackage{array, cellspace, multirow, boldline, booktabs, float}
    \setlength\cellspacetoplimit{4pt}
 \setlength\cellspacebottomlimit{4pt}
\usepackage{adjustbox}

    \begin{document}

\begin{table}[H]
\centering
\begin{adjustbox}{max width=\textwidth}
\setlength{\aboverulesep}{0pt}
\setlength{\belowrulesep}{0pt}
\label{my-label}
\begin{tabular} {p{1.5cm}p{2cm}p{2cm}>{\columncolor{Salmon}}S{p{4cm}}>{\columncolor{OliveGreen}}p{4cm}p{6cm}}
\toprule
\textbf{HQ {[}\%{]}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{Preparation}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{State}} & \multicolumn{1}{Sc}{\color{red}\textbf{POPC}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\color{green}\textbf{DPPTE}} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{\textbf{Comments}} \\
\midrule
\multirow{4}{*}{1} & \multirow{2}{*}{Before rinsing} & Non-oxidized & N/A & N/A & \\%
\cmidrule{3-6}
& & Oxidized & N/A & N/A & \\\cmidrule{2-6} & \multirow{2}{*}{After rinsing} & Non-oxidized & See vesicles on surface which haven't ruptured & See vesicles on surface with no rupture & I am pretty sure I was on the gold surface: vesicles were not moving and I had focused previously using BF mode \\%
\cmidrule{3-6}
& & Oxidized & See vesicles ruptured and agglomerations of "particles on surface". Cannot FRAP the background (checked to see if there is monolayer instead of bilayer).
& See some patches, however these are not very big nor homogeneous patches. When performing FRAP photobleaching takes place and very slow recovery is seen. & This is good hence the slow recovery, since it is much slower than on glass. However, the patches are not nice and big enough to get good enough data to be able to fit and calculate the diffusion coefficient. \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{adjustbox}
\end{table}

\end{document}

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to eliminate the vertical realignment when using arrayrulecolor with cmidrule

Instead of trying to pad the non-ruled columns with a coloured \cmidrule attempt, draw a horizontal line (of the specified colour) across the entire table first, and then skip back (upward) and redraw your \cmidrules. This "skipping" is provided by

\specialrule{<wd>}{<above>}{<below>}

which draws a rule of width <wd> across the table width, leaving a gap of <above> above and <below> below the rule. For your specific instance,

\specialrule{\heavyrulewidth}{0pt}{-\heavyrulewidth}

does the trick. It's the colour changes that causes the "line breaks" in the table, pushing each subsequent \cmidrule down by the width of the previous \cmidrule. Since you need to change the colour for this specific rule, it's best to define your own new rule command:

\newcommand*{\rulefiller}{%
  \arrayrulecolor[gray]{0.8}% change to cell colour
  \specialrule{\heavyrulewidth}{0pt}{-\heavyrulewidth}% "invisible" rule
  \arrayrulecolor{black}% revert to regular line colour
}

Here's your complete MWE (with some small code modifications):

enter image description here

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{longtable}% http://ctan.org/pkg/longtable
\usepackage{booktabs}% http://ctan.org/pkg/booktabs
\usepackage{xcolor}% http://ctan.org/pkg/xcolor
\usepackage{colortbl}% http://ctan.org/pkg/colortbl

\setlength{\aboverulesep}{0pt}
\setlength{\belowrulesep}{0pt}
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{0.25ex}

\newcolumntype{L}{>{\columncolor[gray]{0.8}}l}
\newcolumntype{C}{>{\columncolor[gray]{0.8}}c}
\newcolumntype{R}{>{\columncolor[gray]{0.8}}r}
\newcommand*{\rulefiller}{%
  \arrayrulecolor[gray]{0.8}% change to cell colour
  \specialrule{\heavyrulewidth}{0pt}{-\heavyrulewidth}% "invisible" rule
  \arrayrulecolor{black}% revert to regular line colour
}

\begin{document}

{\sffamily
  \begin{longtable}{LLLLL}
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small \tablename\ \thetable\ - demonstration of odd vertical alignment with arrayrulecolor} & \\%
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small case 1: the line below is a toprule} & \\%
      \toprule
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small case 2: the line below is a cmidrule that spans the middle 3 columns.  Note the whitespace!} & \\%
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small The challenge: hide the widespace giving the appearance of a spacing around a longtable.} & \\%
    \rulefiller\cmidrule[\heavyrulewidth]{2-4}
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small case 3: the line below is 3 cmidrules, 1 each for the first and last columns and 1 for the middle} & \\%
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small note how the cmidrules align vertically ... perfect!} & \\%
    \cmidrule[\heavyrulewidth]{1-1}\cmidrule[\heavyrulewidth]{2-4}\cmidrule[\heavyrulewidth]{5-5}
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small case 4: Now, lets try recoloring the first and last cmidrules} & \\%
    & \multicolumn{3}{@{}L}{\small how do I eliminate the odd vertical alignments?} & \\%
    \rulefiller\cmidrule[\heavyrulewidth]{2-4}
    \endfirsthead
    & Arizona State University &  & ASU & \\ 
    & Baylor University &  & BAYLOR & \\ 
    & Boston University & 164988 & BU & \\ 
    & Brown University & 217156 & BROWN & \\ 
    & California Institute of Technology & 110404 & CALTECH & \\ 
    & Carnegie Mellon University & 211440 & CMU & \\ 
    & Case Western Reserve University & 201645 & CASE & \\ 
    & Columbia University & 190150 & COLUMBIA & \\ 
    & Cornell University & 190415 & CORNELL & \\ 
    & Yale University & 130794 & YALE & %
      \label{tab:schools}
    \end{longtable}
}
\end{document}

This is a side-note, but your table doesn't fit within the margins of the page, causing an "Overfull hbox" warning.

[Tex/LaTex] When does blank space count

The rule about spaces is quite simple (or maybe not too simple).

When TeX reads a line of input it is in one of three states: state N (new line), state S (skipping blanks) or state M (middle of line).

It's clear that at the beginning of a line it is in state N; when in this state, any blank space (TeXnically a character with character code 10, usually space and TAB) is ignored. This state stops to become state M upon finding a non blank character.

If the next character is the end-of-line character (more precisely, a character having category code 5), a \par token is generated and TeX reenters state N for the next line, throwing away anything that possibly follows that character.

When TeX is in state M it generates character tokens for each character it finds unless

the next character is a space, or
the next character is the end-of-line character, or
the next character is the escape character (the backslash).

In case 1 TeX generates a space token and enters state S. In case 2 TeX inserts a space token, throws away what remains on the line and enters state N for reading the next line. In case 3 TeX proceeds to form a symbolic token and there are two subcases:

the next character is a letter (TeXnically, a character with category code 11)
the next character is any other character

In subcase 4 TeX forms the symbolic token's name by accumulating characters until they are letters and, upon finding a non letter, it enters state S. In subcase 5, the symbolic token's name is the single non letter (this is the case of \, or \\, for instance) and remains in state M, unless that non letter was a space, in which case it enters state S.

When TeX is in state S, blank space characters are ignored until finding any character that is not a blank space character, which triggers state M again.

The above discussion is not as general as possible, but adequate for the normal status of category codes.

Let's examine your examples. First

\underbar{word}

where \ triggers state M and, since u is a letter, we are in subcase 4, so the symbolic token \underbar is generated, because { is not a letter. So we have the following tokens

\underbar • { • w • o • r • d • }

(here the spaces are not significant and • separates tokens).

In the second example

\underbar{ word}

we're in the same situation, but the space after { generates a space token and makes TeX enter state S, which is turned into state M by the w. So the formed tokens are

\underbar • { • <SP> • w • o • r • d • }

(where <SP> denotes a space token). The third example

\underbar{     word}

gives the same result, because upon seeing the first space character after {, TeX enters state S after having generated a space token.

The same as in the first example would have happened with

\underbar {word}

because the space stops the formation of the control sequence name and, according to the rule, it enters state S without generating a space token. The only dubious case is

\⍽⍽

where now ⍽ denotes a space character (just to make clear that there are two of them). But according to the rule explained in subcase 5, this generates the token \⍽ and TeX enters state S. Thus typing \⍽, \⍽⍽ or \⍽⍽⍽ is just the same.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] How to eliminate the vertical realignment when using arrayrulecolor with cmidrule

[Tex/LaTex] When does blank space count

Related Question