newenvironment for xtabular timeline

Question

The following question is based on this.

I am sure this is a pretty basic question but I am still at a beginners level.

I have put the following in a new environment in order to increase readability and for ease of use

 \newenvironment{flowtable}[2]
{
\renewcommand\arraystretch{1.4}\arrayrulecolor{LightSteelBlue3}
    \captionsetup{font=blue, labelfont=sc, labelsep=quad,
        skip=0.5\baselineskip}
    % header and footer information
    \topcaption{#1} \label{tab:timeline}
    \tablefirsthead{\toprule}
    \tablehead{\multicolumn{2}{c}{\color{LightSteelBlue3}\textsc{Table \ref{tab:timeline}}, cont'd}\\[0.6ex]
        \toprule}
    \tablelasttail{\bottomrule}
    \xentrystretch{#2} %table length, negative number means longer table, given in fraction, 0.15 means 15%
\begin{xtabular}{@{\,}r <{\hskip 2pt} !{\foo} >{\RaggedRight\arraybackslash}p{5cm}}
}
{
\end{xtabular}
}

Now I can use it as

\begin{flowtable}{My List}{-0.15}
            1947 & AT\&T Bell Labs develop the idea of cellular phones\\
            1968 & Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre envisage the `Dynabook'\\
            1971 & Busicom `Handy-LE' Calculator\\
            1973 & First mobile handset invented by Martin Cooper\\
            1978 & Parker Bros.\ Merlin Computer Toy\\
    \end{flowtable}

This is working. Is there a better way of doing this? How to put some default values for options and suggestion to user indicative of the purpose of the inputs?

it isn't clear what your question is really. \label{tab:timeline} looks wrong, if you use the environment more than once you will get duplicate label errors. — David Carlisle, Oct 29 '16 at 18:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 19 '17 at 20:59

In the following MWE I correct the missing % in the definition of the environment and added the label as variable.

The definition of the environment now is

%\begin{flowtable}{caption}{length}{label}

with caption as the text for the printed caption, length the length for command \xentrystretch{#2} and new label for the variable label to be used in command \ref.

Please see the following complete WE

\documentclass[a4paper,twoside,twocolumn,11pt]{book}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{xtab}
\usepackage[TS1,T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{fourier, heuristica}
\usepackage{array, booktabs, caption, ragged2e}
\usepackage[x11names,table]{xcolor}
\DeclareCaptionFont{blue}{\color{LightSteelBlue3}}

\newcommand{\foo}{\color{LightSteelBlue3}\makebox[0pt]{\textbullet}\hskip-0.5pt\vrule width 1pt\hspace{\labelsep}}


%\begin{flowtable}{caption}{length}{label}
\newenvironment{flowtable}[3]
{
\renewcommand\arraystretch{1.4}\arrayrulecolor{LightSteelBlue3}%
    \captionsetup{font=blue, labelfont=sc, labelsep=quad,
        skip=0.5\baselineskip}%
    % header and footer information
    \topcaption{#1} \label{#3}%
    \tablefirsthead{\toprule}%
    \tablehead{\multicolumn{2}{c}{\color{LightSteelBlue3}\textsc{Table \ref{#3}}, cont'd}\\[0.6ex]
        \toprule}%
    \tablelasttail{\bottomrule}%
    \xentrystretch{#2} %table length, negative number means longer table, given in fraction, 0.15 means 15%
\begin{xtabular}{@{\,}r <{\hskip 2pt} !{\foo} >{\RaggedRight\arraybackslash}p{5cm}}%
}%
{%
\end{xtabular}%
}


\begin{document}

\begin{flowtable}{My List}{-0.15}{tab:test}
  1947 & AT\&T Bell Labs develop the idea of cellular phones\\
  1968 & Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre envisage the `Dynabook'\\
  1971 & Busicom `Handy-LE' Calculator\\
  1973 & First mobile handset invented by Martin Cooper\\
  1978 & Parker Bros.\ Merlin Computer Toy\\
\end{flowtable}

In table~\ref{tab:test} we can see ...
\end{document}

and its result:

newenvironment for xtabular timeline

1 Answers1