6

a) Most journal have old LaTeX distribution or do not want to bother with “complicated” packages such as those derived from pgf (see Using TikZ in journal articles).

I have build a table using pgfplotstable and I would like the editors to reproduce its formatting. However, due to remark a), I suppose it will be better not to include the corresponding code in my submission but something that self-compile. Is there a way to include my table in a fashion similar to externalization with TikZ? Not including another non-standard package would be better; the definition of non-standard being rather dependent on the targeted journal.

In any case, I suppose the editors would have the table rekeyed to fit their style. How do you suggest to provide them with the data of the table?

Community
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M. Toya
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2 Answers2

12

pgfplotstable can write the output latex code to a file, if you need. Consider this example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{pgfplotstable}
\pgfplotsset{compat=newest}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{filecontents}
\begin{filecontents*}{test.csv}
 A,B,C
 0,0,T
 1,1,T
 2,2,T
 3,3,T
 4,4,T
 5,5,T
\end{filecontents*}


\pgfplotstableread[col sep=comma]{test.csv}\mytable

\begin{document}
\pgfplotstabletypeset[outfile=mytable.out.tex, % ----->write latex code to the file.
            begin table=\begin{longtable},
            end table=\end{longtable},
            every head row/.style={before row=\toprule,after row=\midrule\endhead},
            every last row/.style={after row=\bottomrule},
            columns/A/.style={int detect,column name=A},
            columns/B/.style={int detect,column name=B},
            columns/C/.style={string type,column name=C},
            columns={A,B,C},
            ]\mytable
\end{document}

Note the outfile=mytable.out.tex, directive in the code. pgfplotstable writes the latex code to the file mytable.out.tex in the same folder as your other auxiliary files. The contents of mytable.out.tex will be

\begin {longtable}{ccc}%
\toprule A&B&C\\\midrule \endhead %
\pgfutilensuremath {0}&\pgfutilensuremath {0}&T\\%
\pgfutilensuremath {1}&\pgfutilensuremath {1}&T\\%
\pgfutilensuremath {2}&\pgfutilensuremath {2}&T\\%
\pgfutilensuremath {3}&\pgfutilensuremath {3}&T\\%
\pgfutilensuremath {4}&\pgfutilensuremath {4}&T\\%
\pgfutilensuremath {5}&\pgfutilensuremath {5}&T\\\bottomrule %
\end {longtable}%

When you submit your paper to the journal, replace \pgfplotstabletypeset[..]{..}\mytable with the contents of mytable.out.tex as usual (you may \input{mytable.out.tex}).

For more details, search outfile in the pgfplotstable manual. In my copy, it is discussed in detail in page 22.

  • As stated in the documentation, some post editing might be required. In addition to replacing \pgfutilensuremath by \ensuremath, I had to remove \pgfplotstableresetcolortbloverhangright and \pgfplotstableresetcolortbloverhangleft. I think these are caused by the dec sep align option. There are some slight spacing issue when simply removing them. – M. Toya Jul 24 '13 at 07:45
  • In my setup I use outfile=mytable.out.tex in combination with typeset=false and \include{mytable.out.tex}. The option typeset=false will only generate the outfile without including the table right in place. So I split all the table generation stuff in to another file and later do the includes in place where needed. Before publishing I exclude the table generation file and do some replacing e.g. \pgfutilensuremath by \ensuremath and remove the pgfplotstable import in the preamble – David Boho Jun 27 '18 at 08:01
1

Stripping out all the pgf commands is the way to go once one has created the outfile. Also it's worth removing \usepackage{pgfplotstable} from the preamble as I've noticed that this can create compilation errors with certain journal style files even if no pgf commands/macros are used in the document.

I replaced the \pgfplotstableresetcolortbloverhang[left right] commands with \ragged[left right] and it seems to have worked ok.

Dai
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