Fitting table to textwidth without packages and keeping centered text alignment

Question

I am working on a machine where I currently cannot import packages. I want to fit a table into textwidth without the usual package. I managed to do this fixing the column width manually using p{2cm} as suggested here. But the problem is that then the text in the columns are not centered anymore, which I would like for all except the left one.

MWE of main document

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \centering
    \input{table.tex}
\end{table}
\clearpage
\end{document}

MWE of Table

\begin{tabular}{p{2cm}p{2cm}p{2cm}}
    Hi & Hi & Hi \\
    \hline
    11 & 0 & 1111 \\
    1 & 0 & 314 \\
\end{tabular}

just use \centering in the cells and end table rows with \tabularnrwline. but you could use packages if you can write a file table.tex then you can save a copy of array.sty at the same place — David Carlisle, Mar 26 '22 at 11:23
I can't import files, I could retype the package code, but it's too long. Would you put \centering in each cell then? — Papayapap, Mar 26 '22 at 13:14
you could use a standard \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{ccc} but why do you want to spread the columns out, it just makes the table hard to read. — David Carlisle, Mar 26 '22 at 13:29
Ah, tabular* is not a package? Great. The real issue is that somehow the columns stretch longer than the content of the table and thus more than textwidth. I am outputting the tex file from another software and somehow the tables are far too wide. — Papayapap, Mar 26 '22 at 13:32
well tabular* will not help with that at all, it is for stretching tables to be wider than they would be as in the example you postd. For tables where you want line wrapping in the cells you need p columns as you show. Bu the no package requirement honestly makes no sense here, If you have laex at all you have packages such as tabularx, it is a condition of distributing latex that they are available. — David Carlisle, Mar 26 '22 at 13:35

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 26 '22 at 12:36

1

One possible way is use of the tabularray package:

main document:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\begin{document}
\begin{table}
    \centering
    \input{table.tex}
\end{table}
\end{document}

table code:

\begin{tblr}{colspec = {Q[l,wd=2cm]Q[c,wd=2cm]Q[c,wd=2cm]}}
    Hi & Hi & Hi    \\
    \hline
    11 & 0  & 1111  \\
    1  & 0  & 314
\end{tblr}

answered Mar 26 '22 at 12:36

Zarko

296,517

Thank you, but the question considered doing this without packages. – Papayapap Mar 26 '22 at 13:05
1

Sorry, what you like to have, is not possible without of them. – Zarko Mar 26 '22 at 13:09

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '22 at 19:00

I don't want to reinvent the world, but it is possible to obtain what you want with the standard package array and its wc column type (I added vertical lines in the table to make obvious the table contents are centred in their columns):

    \documentclass{article}
    \usepackage{array}
\begin{document}

\begin{table}
    \centering
    \input{table.tex}
\end{table}
\clearpage

\end{document} 

\begin{tabular}{|wc{2cm}|wc{2cm}|wc{2cm}|}
    Hi &amp; Hi &amp; Hi \\
    \hline
    11 &amp; 0 &amp; 1111 \\
    1 &amp; 0 &amp; 314 \\
\end{tabular}

Fitting table to textwidth without packages and keeping centered text alignment

2 Answers2