formattingtables
I want to know if there is a way to separate table / content for table style (think CSS).
Like to have only data specification
\begin{tabular}
H1 & H2 & H3 & h4 \\
V1 & V2 & V3 & V4 \\
\end{tabular}
And then have the style somewhere to have the heading bold, the line filled, etc.
If you absolutely must employ the "prison look" for tables, but wish to lessen the visual oppressiveness, consider getting rid of the \hline directives in the body of the tabular material. And, load the array package and set \extrarowheight to a small non-zero length value. :-)
You should also make an effort to give the term "R" ("dispersion value") a consistent appearance. In your code, it shows up in math italics in the table's header but in upright ("Roman") in the body of the table. Do make the appearance of this variable name consistent. In the code below, I show how to make use of the math-italics method. And, while we're talking about consistency, I've made the M term employ (bold) math italics as well.
Finally, to center some material in a single cell of the first column, use a \multicolumn{1}{|c|}{...} "wrapper".
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{array} % for '\extrarowheight' macro
\usepackage{caption} % for '\captionsetup' macro
\usepackage{amstext} % for '\text' macro
\renewcommand{\thetable}{\Roman{table}} % just for this example
\begin{document}
\begin{table}%[h]
\captionsetup{font=bf,skip=0.5\baselineskip}
\setlength{\extrarowheight}{2pt}
\centering
\caption{\boldmath Values of Dispersion Constant ($R$)}
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|l|}
\hline
\multicolumn{1}{|c|}{\textbf{Algorithm}} &
\multicolumn{2}{ c|}{\boldmath\textbf{Dispersion Constant ($R$)}}\\
\hline
& \boldmath $M=16$ & \boldmath $M=32$ \\
\hline
SCA & $R_{\text{SCA}} = 123$ & $R_{\text{SCA}} = 123$ \\ %\hline
MCMA & $R_{\text{MCMA}} = 123$ & $R_{\text{MCMA}} = 123$\\ %\hline
MCMA(Dual Mode) & $R_{\text{MCMA}}$ & $R_{\text{MCMA}}$\\ %\hline
DD-MCMA & $R_{\text{DD-MCMA}} = 123$ & $R_{\text{DD-MCMA}} = 123$\\%\hline
DD-MCMA(Dual Mode) & $R_{\text{DD-MCMA}}$& $R_{\text{DD-MCMA}}$\\
\hline
\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{document}
Best Answer
You can separate content and format in (La)TeX by defining your own logical format macros which are then (re)defined to the physical format macros required for each particular table.
For example the following table is used coded once but can be used with different styles. Normally the table might be in a user document or in a
.texfile on its own and the styles could be placed in.styfiles.Result: