Creating a formatted table from a list of words

Question

I am working on putting together a grammar book which has a lot of bilingual examples, and simultaneously trying to learn the memoir class. The book will have many tables which look like the following in it:

For reference, here is the code I used to make the table above (Where \dak and \eng are just shorthand names for two different fonts I'm using with XeLateX.)

\begin{center}
\begin{tabular}{ c c c}
\toprule
{\dak wayáte} & {\dak waŋčhíyaŋke} & {\dak wičháuŋk'upi}\\
{\eng You ate.} & {\eng I see you.} & {\eng We gave it to them. }\\
&&\\
{\dak čhičhíčaǧe} & {\dak nihdúžaža }& {\dak šá}\\
{\eng I made it for you.} & {\eng You washed yourself.} & {\eng It is red.}\\ 
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{center}

However, I'd much prefer to design some sort of environment / command that will automatically take in a list of words and their translations like this, and output a correctly formatted table. Here was one of my initial attempts at such a project:

\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\dak{Linux Biolinum O}
\newfontfamily\eng{JosefinSans-SemiBold}
\newenvironment{DakEx31}[6]{% 
\begin{table}
\centering
\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.2}
\begin{tabular}{*{3}{c}}
    \toprule
{\dak #1} &{\dak #2}&{\dak #3}\\
{\eng #4}&{\eng #5}&{\eng #6}\\
\bottomrule
}
{\end{tabular}
\end{table}}


\begin{document}

\begin{DakEx31}
{wayáte}{waŋčhíyaŋke}{wičháuŋk'upi}
{You ate.}{I see you.}{We gave it to them.}
\end{DakEx31}

\end{document}

To produce a nice looking table 3 examples wide and 1 tall. However, obviously going with this approach I would need to define a different command for each size table I would want, which I would like to avoid should it become necessary to add to / change the examples provided in a given section as the writing process progresses. Also, this approach fails as I try and make my tables much larger as such a command can only accept 9 inputs.

My main experience with TeX is typing mathematical papers; and so I do not know enough to be able to design the kind of environment I need here. What I'm looking for is a command where I can specify the number of columns (and the number of rows, if necessary), and then input a list of words / their translations, and then have the output be a nicely formatted table with the text in Dakota in one font, the text in English in another, and a blank row between rows of examples. Thanks!

Answer 1

This should do the trick. As I don't have your fonts installed, I used \textsf and \textit instead, but you should be able to adapt it to your will.

There is not much to say, I adapted the solution give here.

Note that the maximum number of columns is defined in the variable \maxcolumns. You can change it as you wish.

Usage is the following:

\begin{vartab}
  \english{word1,word2,word3,word4}
  \french{mot1,mot2,mot3,mot4}
\end{vartab}

Complete code:

\documentclass{memoir}
%\usepackage{fontspec}
%\newfontfamily\dak{Linux Biolinum O}
%\newfontfamily\eng{JosefinSans-SemiBold}
\newcommand\dak{\textsf}
\newcommand\eng{\textit}


\renewcommand{\arraystretch}{1.2}

\usepackage{etoolbox}

\newcommand{\doenglish}[1]{\appto\temp{&\dak{#1}}}
\newcommand{\dofrench}[1]{\appto\temp{&\eng{#1}}}


\newcommand{\english}[1]{%
  \def\temp{}% initialize to empty
  \forcsvlist{\doenglish}{#1}% add entries
  \appto\temp{\\}% end the row
  \temp % deliver contents
}

\newcommand{\french}[1]{%
  \def\temp{}% initialize to empty
  \forcsvlist{\dofrench}{ #1}% add entries
  \appto\temp{\\}% end the row
  \temp % deliver contents
}


\newenvironment{vartab}
  {\begin{tabular}{ c@{} *{\maxcolumns}{c} } \toprule}
  {\bottomrule\end{tabular}}

\def\maxcolumns{20}

\begin{document}
\thispagestyle{empty}

\begin{vartab}
\english{Word1,Word2,Word3}
\french{Mot1,Mot2,Mot3}
\end{vartab}

\begin{vartab}
\english{word1,word2,word3,word4}
\french{mot1,mot2,mot3,mot4}
\end{vartab}

\begin{vartab}
\english{word1,word2,word3,word4,word5,word6,word7,world8,word9,word10}
\french{mot1,mot2,mot3,mot4,mot5,mot6,mot7,mot8,mot9,mot10}
\end{vartab}

\end{document}

Answer 2

Not a complete answer as it doesn't deal with the rules before and after, but here goes. It uses the memoir \autorows macro.

\documentclass{memoir}
\newcommand{\trans}[2]{\shortstack{#1 \\ \textbf{#2} \\ \mbox{}}}
\pagestyle{empty}
\begin{document}
\autorows{c}{3}{c}{%
  trans{one}{eins},\trans{two}{zwei},\trans{three}{drei},\trans{four}{vier}.
  \trans{five}{funf},\trans{six{sechs},    \trans{seven}{sieben}}
\end{document}