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I need to create a document with frequently changing between one and two columns and a lot of (long)tables and sometimes including a (multipage) pdf document. The complete document and resulting pdf is created automatically, so no possibility to inject column or page breaks manually.

I choose tabularray for it's wide and easy possibilites of row- and col-spanning as well as creating long tables.

I started with multicols package, but chapters with too many long tables have problems in correct column/page breaks.

...finally I found this post Balancing long table inside multicol in LaTeX

Any chance that this works with tabularray as well?

This is what it tried:

\documentclass[11pt, a5paper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=3cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{tabularray}
\usepackage{multicol}

\newsavebox\ltmcbox


\def\shortlipsum{\par Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Ut purus elit, vestibulum ut, placerat ac, adipiscing vitae, felis. Curabitur dictum gravida mauris. Nam arcu libero, nonummy eget, consectetuer id, vulputate a, magna. Donec vehicula augue eu neque.\par}


\newcounter{entryno}
\setcounter{entryno}{1}
\def\tabline{Test & \the\value{entryno} & Description\addtocounter{entryno}{1}\}
\def\tablines{\tabline\tabline\tabline\tabline\tabline}


\begin{document}


\begin{multicols}{2}
    \shortlipsum
    \medskip

    \setbox\ltmcbox\vbox{
        \makeatletter\col@number\@ne
        \begin{longtblr}[caption={}, label=none, entry=none]{colspec={lll}}
            %\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines\tablines
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
            a & b & c\\
        \end{longtblr}
        \unskip
        \unpenalty
        \unpenalty}

    \unvbox\ltmcbox


    \medskip
    \shortlipsum
\end{multicols}
\shortlipsum



\end{document}

Sorry for my ugly code, but I didn't get the tablines macros working inside the table.

enter image description here

Peter Weis
  • 21
  • did you try it? – David Carlisle Aug 12 '22 at 20:20
  • @DavidCarlisle yes I already tried it. I think that the trick \makeatletter\col@number\@ne is not working for longtblr, but I don't know which variable would be the equivalent, or I'm on the wrong track... – Peter Weis Aug 12 '22 at 20:44
  • well if you provided an example and showed what error you get someone might run it and debug. without that unlikely unless the tabularray author passes by (which he does quite often) – David Carlisle Aug 12 '22 at 20:52
  • I have tried this before, but the problem is that longtblr puts the rows into several layers of boxes. longtable on the other hand puts it into a single box, which is removed by \unvbox\ltmcbox. It doesn't help to unbox the longtblr several times because there are also other elements (like penalties or spaces or so, if I remember correctly) that makes it impossible to break the thing apart in standard LaTeX. Maybe some Lua code in Luatex could do it? – Pieter van Oostrum Aug 12 '22 at 21:47

0 Answers0