[Tex/LaTex] tabular* with rubber spacing and \cline

rulesspacingtables

I'm using a tabular* with rubber spacing to fill the complete width of the page. This works fine, except that when I use \cline, the line is not complete. It seems that \cline does not cover the spacing. I'm using pdflatex. Below you will find a code example. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 \usepackage{array} % for defining a new column type
 \usepackage{varwidth} %for the varwidth minipage environment
 %...
 \newcolumntype{M}{>{\begin{varwidth}{6cm}}l<{\end{varwidth}}} %M is for Maximal column
 %...
 \begin{tabular*}{15.5cm}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}} | M | r | r | r | r |}
   \hline
   \bf Omschrijving & \bf Hoeveelheid & \bf Prijs & \bf SubTotaal & \bf BTW\\
   \hline
   Armband 2 & 1 & 256.00 & 256.00 & 19.00\% \\
   \hline
   \multicolumn{3}{c |}{} & SubTotaal & 256.00\\
   \multicolumn{3}{c |}{} & BTW (19.0) & 48.64\\
   \multicolumn{3}{c |}{}  & \bf Totaal & \bf 304.64\\
   \cline{4-5}
\end{tabular*}

Best Answer

That's caused by \extracolsep{\fill} which produces the space that \cline doesn't fill. You could verify that by removing @{\extracolsep{\fill}}.

Besides removing that rubber length, you could repair it by

  • inserting another one such as

\begin{tabular*}{15.5cm}{@{\extracolsep{\fill}}| M | r | r |@{\extracolsep{0pt}}r | r |}

  • or by using a width-fitting tabular environment which adjust the columns width instead of the column separation: tabularx. This would be my choice.

Further I strongly recommend to omit all these vertical lines which obstruct the reading. Good tables don't need to be grids! Have a look at the booktabs package and its documentation. I would use perhaps a top line, a seperation line below the header and a bottom line, but no vertical line at all. Compare tables in good books, you're able to typeset fine tables too.

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