[Tex/LaTex] Wrap Text in Long Table – Improvement ideas

book-designlongtabletablestext manipulation

I've got a very long table top create with, at times, lots of text to wrap around within it. I'd rather not use a landscape orientation.

So I created the following test, with the \ltxtable package.

The core code is: 

\documentclass[a4paper,oneside,centered,noparindent,noparskip]{bookest}

%\usepackage{showframe}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{ltxtable}
\usepackage{threeparttable}
\usepackage{textcomp}

\begin{document}

\LTXtable{\textwidth}{t3.tex}

\end{document}

While the t3.tex file longtable code is:

\begin{longtable}{lp{4.5cm}lp{6.5cm}} \toprule  
% header ------------------------
\textnumero& Name \& Title & Dates & Events \\ \midrule
\endhead
1& King Soandso III & 2234 -- to date &  This is some text \\
2& King Soandso III & 2234 -- 3456 & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively\\
3& King Soandso III & 234 -- 134 (?)& This is some text \\
4& Queen Soandso III  & 15thc -- 16thc (?) & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively\\
5& King Soandso III ``The Radiant Light of the Sun over the Water of the Old Spring'' & 15thc -- 16thc (?) &  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
6&&&  This is some text \\
--&\multicolumn{3}{p{14.5cm}}{\textit{And what if there was a lot of text here that needed to be wrapped properly and elegantly to let the text breathe.}} \\
7&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
8&&&  This is some text \\
9&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
10&&&  This is some text \\ \bottomrule
\caption{Kings \& Queens.}
\end{longtable}

The result is this:

enter image description here

Any suggestion on how I may improve it?

For instance, why is the caption appearing so close to the bottom of the table? It's not like that with "regular" tables.

And the whole thing feels … "ugly" and awkward would be the terms.

Thanks.

Best Answer

It's easier, if you need spanning p columns, to use p everywhere as then you know the column width to span. I aligned the -- in the dates and moved the caption to the top.

enter image description here

\documentclass[oneside,centered,noparindent,noparskip]{bookest}

%\usepackage{showframe}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{threeparttable}
\usepackage{textcomp}
\usepackage{array}

\begin{document}

\begin{longtable}{
@{}
>{\raggedright}p{.5cm}
p{4.5cm}
>{\raggedleft}p{1.5cm}@{}
>{\raggedright}p{2cm}
p{6.5cm}
@{}}
% header ------------------------
\caption{Kings \& Queens.}\\
 \toprule  
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\textnumero}&
\multicolumn{1}{c}{Name \& Title}&
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Dates}&
\multicolumn{1}{c}{Events}\\ \midrule
\endfirsthead
\caption[]{Kings \& Queens.}\\
 \toprule  
\multicolumn{1}{c}{\textnumero}&
\multicolumn{1}{c}{Name \& Title}&
\multicolumn{2}{c}{Dates}&
\multicolumn{1}{c}{Events}\\ \midrule
\endhead
1& King Soandso III & 2234 &-- to date &  This is some text \\
2& King Soandso III & 2234 &-- 3456 & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively\\
3& King Soandso III & 234 &-- 134 (?)& This is some text \\
4& Queen Soandso III  & 15thc &-- 16thc (?) & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively\\
5& King Soandso III ``The Radiant Light of the Sun over the Water of the Old Spring'' & 15thc &-- 16thc (?) &  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
6&&&&  This is some text \dotfill\\
--&\multicolumn{4}{p{\dimexpr14.5cm+4\tabcolsep}@{}}{%
\textit{And what if there was a lot of text here that needed to be wrapped properly and elegantly to let the text breathe.}} \\
7&&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
8&&&&  This is some text \\
9&&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively \\
10&&&&  This is some text \\ \bottomrule
\end{longtable}

\end{document}
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