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LaTeX starts being a massive pain once you write tables—to remediate that I use Org mode’s table editor[0]. Combined with the ability to run code blocks and pa

LaTeX starts being a massive pain once you write tables—to remediate that I use Org mode’s table editor[0]. Combined with the ability to run code blocks and parse data, it makes LaTeX a very flexible document format. For instance I had a data table that would be rendered via gnuplot and the resulting PNG inserted into the document. [0] https://orgmode.org/manual/Built_002din-Table-Editor.html https://orgmode.org/manual/Built_002din-Table-Editor.html

taeric 5y ago
To be fair, most things become a pain once you start doing tables. Just look at the HTML way of getting numbers aligned on a decimal point. Heaven help you if you want to align anything on an equals sign. :D
- dash2 5y ago
  I wrote the huxtable R package to output tables in HTML, Word, RTF and TeX, and TeX is more painful than all the others combined. Basic tables are less capable than HTML, and for anything more advanced you are quickly in a maze of competing packages.
  - taeric 5y ago
    I'm curious what sort of tables you have in mind. At large, tables that I would use for a report don't seem that hard. Now, as soon as I'm reaching for packages outside of core, things change. But, again, as soon as I do that in any other package, heaven help me. We still haven't made our tables on our tools site align the numbers on the decimal point.
    - dash2 5y ago
      Rowspans. Coloured backgrounds. Non-standard borders. Vertical alignment (the LaTeX version of this does not do anything intuitive). And if you ask TeX people how to do these things, they will tell you you don’t need to, at which point you will die a little inside. I should add that I disagree that TeX has a good solution for decimal-point aligned columns. It has an absurd solution which involves dividing the column into two “columns”. As with many TeX features, as soon as you want to do this programmatically, it becomes a nightmare.(I don’t claim that any other markup languages are better at this – HTML still sucks for it - though Excel may do okay.)
      - taeric 5y ago
        I am probably more aligned with the folks that don't like colors and such. I hasten to add that for interactive and color screens, I change my mind. Agreed that the TeX solution is bad if you want semantic markup of a table. If you abandon the idea of selective fields, it doesn't seem that bad to me.

taeric 5y ago

To be fair, most things become a pain once you start doing tables. Just look at the HTML way of getting numbers aligned on a decimal point. Heaven help you if you want to align anything on an equals sign. :D

dash2 5y ago
I wrote the huxtable R package to output tables in HTML, Word, RTF and TeX, and TeX is more painful than all the others combined. Basic tables are less capable than HTML, and for anything more advanced you are quickly in a maze of competing packages.
- taeric 5y ago
  I'm curious what sort of tables you have in mind. At large, tables that I would use for a report don't seem that hard. Now, as soon as I'm reaching for packages outside of core, things change. But, again, as soon as I do that in any other package, heaven help me. We still haven't made our tables on our tools site align the numbers on the decimal point.
  - dash2 5y ago
    Rowspans. Coloured backgrounds. Non-standard borders. Vertical alignment (the LaTeX version of this does not do anything intuitive). And if you ask TeX people how to do these things, they will tell you you don’t need to, at which point you will die a little inside. I should add that I disagree that TeX has a good solution for decimal-point aligned columns. It has an absurd solution which involves dividing the column into two “columns”. As with many TeX features, as soon as you want to do this programmatically, it becomes a nightmare.(I don’t claim that any other markup languages are better at this – HTML still sucks for it - though Excel may do okay.)
    - taeric 5y ago
      I am probably more aligned with the folks that don't like colors and such. I hasten to add that for interactive and color screens, I change my mind. Agreed that the TeX solution is bad if you want semantic markup of a table. If you abandon the idea of selective fields, it doesn't seem that bad to me.