Rotate a table with caption into landscape mode

Question

I have a table and want to rotate it with the caption by 90 degrees. The table is large and wouldn't even fit when rotated. Hence, I resize it first and rotate it by 90 degrees afterwards (since I don't want to resize the caption as well). To be precise, I resize it to textheight, put it into a minipage and rotate it using sideways. The problem is that the minipage is of width .95\textheight (which is obviously too large in portrait mode) which will create a blank page (i.e. the appendix is not starting on a RHS page). This hack was the closest I could get to the desired result.

I tried different solutions but all of them had a downside (e.g., varwidth inside sideways threw errors for multiline captions of the table).

Here's a full working example with a small table causing the same problem.

\documentclass[twoside,a5paper]{scrbook}

\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{setspace}

\begin{document}

\chapter{My chapter}

\begin{sideways}
    \begin{minipage}{.95\textheight}
        \resizebox{.95\textheight}{!}{%
            \setstretch{1.5}
            \begin{tabular}{llll}
            1 & 2 & 3 & 4 \\
            a & b & c & d \\
            \end{tabular}
        }
        \renewcommand\thetable{A.1}
        \captionof{table}{A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery loooooooooooooooooooong caption that does not fit into one line.}
        \label{tab:my_label}
    \end{minipage}
\end{sideways}

\end{document}

Answer 1

The OP comments:

The complete example I provided works just fine except an empty page inserted before the table.

Now to the answer:

The combination of .95\textheight plus the height of the chapter heading exceeds the value of \textheight, thus a blank page is introduced (its standard LaTeX behavior to do this). The solution is to reduce .95 to, for example, .8. I also add some centering.

\documentclass[twoside,a5paper]{scrbook}

\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{setspace}

\begin{document}

\chapter{My chapter}

{\centering\begin{sideways}
    \begin{minipage}{.8\textheight}
        \resizebox{.8\textheight}{!}{%
            \setstretch{1.5}
            \begin{tabular}{llll}
            1 & 2 & 3 & 4 \\
            a & b & c & d \\
            \end{tabular}
        }
        \renewcommand\thetable{A.1}
        \captionof{table}{A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery loooooooooooooooooooong caption that does not fit into one line.}
        \label{tab:my_label}
    \end{minipage}
\end{sideways}\par}

\end{document}

Of course, other options could be pursued, such as \smashing the table height to allow it to exceed the margin.

In it's present configuration, of course, the table does not float, but the use of \clearpage would allow one to place it on its own separate page, using the .95\textheight value. For example,

\documentclass[twoside,a5paper]{scrbook}

\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}

\chapter{My chapter}
\lipsum[1-2]
\clearpage
\begin{sideways}
    \begin{minipage}{.95\textheight}
        \resizebox{.95\textheight}{!}{%
            \setstretch{1.5}
            \begin{tabular}{llll}
            1 & 2 & 3 & 4 \\
            a & b & c & d \\
            \end{tabular}
        }
        \renewcommand\thetable{A.1}
        \captionof{table}{A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery loooooooooooooooooooong caption that does not fit into one line.}
        \label{tab:my_label}
    \end{minipage}
\end{sideways}
\clearpage\lipsum[3]
\end{document}

Finally, you could just make it float:

\documentclass[twoside,a5paper]{scrbook}

\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{setspace}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\begin{document}

\chapter{My chapter}
\lipsum[1-2]
\begin{table}[p]
\begin{sideways}
    \begin{minipage}{.95\textheight}
        \resizebox{.95\textheight}{!}{%
            \setstretch{1.5}
            \begin{tabular}{llll}
            1 & 2 & 3 & 4 \\
            a & b & c & d \\
            \end{tabular}
        }
        \renewcommand\thetable{A.1}
        \captionof{table}{A veeeeeeeeeeeeeeeery loooooooooooooooooooong caption that does not fit into one line.}
        \label{tab:my_label}
    \end{minipage}
\end{sideways}
\end{table}
\lipsum[3]
\end{document}