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Lately, I was trying to fit a long multi-column table with a lot of text in a double-column single-file document. The document is making heavy use of single-column tabularxs in two-column mode, my long table is in one-column mode. I struggled in conveniently getting the multi-page table to work with tabularx-like column formatting up to page-width.

As for the convenience/automation part (thanks to the nice overview), I know of

  • tabularx, awesome for column formatting but not for multi-page tables
  • ltablex, awesome for combining tabularx with longtable but not well matching with double-column documents (at least I haven't managed to get around the changes ltablex does to the tabularx package)
  • xtab (enhancement of supertabular), awesome features but without supporting tabularx-style column formatting (at least I haven't managed)
  • tabulary, which nicely automates column formatting but is not the right thing to do multi-page tables

I found some answers on multi-page tables with tabularx (e.g. here, here) and an answer using tabulary (here), not quite doing what I intent.

The following MWE using ltablex does almost what I want:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
% \usepackage{tabularx} % works for 1st table only
\usepackage{ltablex} % works for 2nd table only

\begin{document}
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\maketitle
\lipsum[1-4]

\begin{table}
  \caption{A small table in twocolumn mode}
  \begin{tabularx}{\columnwidth}{lllXX}
    \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} & \textbf{C5} \\ 
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. \\
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. 
  \end{tabularx}
\end{table}

\newpage
\onecolumn
\begin{tabularx}{\linewidth}{l>{\hsize.2\hsize}XXX}
  \caption{Full-width multi-page table in one-column mode}\\
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endfirsthead
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endhead
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{Continued on next page}} \\ 
  \endfoot
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{End}} \\
  \endlastfoot
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] 
\end{tabularx}

\newpage
\twocolumn
\lipsum[10-14]
\end{document}

The MWE works with either the first table and tabularx or the second table and ltablex. However, with ltablex (which uses longtable), I am getting: 

Package longtable Error: longtable not in 1-column mode.

Also, I got aware of the ltxtable package, however, it requires a split of files. Can I get ltablex to deal better with twocolumn mode or do I have to switch to ltxtable?

Thank you!

mfg
  • 499
  • You can insert tabularx in a strip environment from the cuted package (sttools bundle). – Bernard Aug 25 '18 at 09:13
  • it isn't clear how you want the page breaking to work, it seems that you do not want the table to be broken at each column, but rather have a full width table with breaking at page rather than column level, in which case the two-column nature of the rest of the document shouldn't be an issue just put \onecolumn before the table and do as you would do for a single column document. that said I think tabularx is over-used and I probably wouldn't use it on a document I was writing by hand in latex (it is more useful for automated production where you have less control over the formatting) – David Carlisle Aug 25 '18 at 10:20
  • @David: Thank you. I am actually talking of a situation where \onecolumn is already in place. I will make this clear in the question. As ltablex came closest to what I wanted but was interfering AND I wanted to keep my other tabularx chunks, I was wondering whether there is a package/a way to do it without this sort of conflict? I read that ltablex has a \setlongtable switch. Believing that this would change ltablex's mode of using longtable and tabularx I tried to set it but couldn't get it to work. – mfg Aug 25 '18 at 10:31
  • Of course, not using tabularx in the first place would be an option. – mfg Aug 25 '18 at 10:34
  • Really you should (always) provide a small complete test document that shows the problem, I can not guess what "interference" you mean, do you get an error messgage or wrong output or .... ? If you add a test document to your question it would be much easier to debug. – David Carlisle Aug 25 '18 at 10:36
  • @Mario given the time it takes to write a document, spending a few seconds to choose the column widths in a table seems to me time worth spending, why do you need tabularx ? – David Carlisle Aug 25 '18 at 10:37
  • @David: I have used tabularx already, didn't have enough time to convert the code of all tables. In principle, I understand your suggestion perfectly. I will provide an MWE asap. Awk. – mfg Aug 25 '18 at 12:14
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    not really a problem, you could leave all your tabularx, and just change the markup for the multipage table, ltxtable would work for you, or you could use a normal longtable for that table. – David Carlisle Aug 25 '18 at 12:37
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – mfg Aug 25 '18 at 18:47
  • What is the purpose of "{l>{\hsize.2\hsize}XXX}"? Thank you. – burningfuses Oct 13 '19 at 15:16
  • Hi, afaik, for telling LaTeX that the 2nd column should be stretched to a width of 0.2 \hsize. Without that the three variable-width columns (specified with X) would be split evenly, that is, 1/3 \hsize each. – mfg Oct 13 '19 at 17:33

2 Answers2

1

According to David's suggestion I modified my MWE to be:

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{tabularx} % works for 1st table only
\usepackage{ltxtable} % works for 2nd table only

\begin{document}
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\maketitle
\lipsum[1-4]

\begin{table}
  \caption{A small table in twocolumn mode}
  \begin{tabularx}{\columnwidth}{lllXX}
    \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} & \textbf{C5} \\ 
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. \\
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. 
  \end{tabularx}
\end{table}

\newpage
\onecolumn
\LTXtable{\linewidth}{table.tex}

\newpage
\twocolumn
\lipsum[10-14]
\end{document}

with the table in an extra file table.tex:

\begin{longtable}{l>{\hsize.2\hsize}XXX}
  \caption{Full-width multi-page table in one-column mode}\\
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endfirsthead
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endhead
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{Continued on next page}} \\ 
  \endfoot
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{End}} \\
  \endlastfoot
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] 
\end{longtable}

This is a decent solution, if we accept to split the document into two files.

mfg
  • 499
0

There is a recent package xltabular making it possible to have all code in a single file, getting rid of interferences of ltablex with (floats in) two-column mode while introducing some convenience over longtable: 

\documentclass[twocolumn]{article} 
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{tabularx} % works for 1st table only
\usepackage{xltabular} % works for 2nd table only

\begin{document}
\title{Title}
\author{Author}
\maketitle
\lipsum[1-4]

\begin{table}
  \caption{A small table in twocolumn mode}
  \begin{tabularx}{\columnwidth}{lllXX}
    \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} & \textbf{C5} \\ 
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. \\
    A & 1 & a & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. & Quite a bit of text here as well, though. 
  \end{tabularx}
\end{table}

\newpage
\onecolumn
\begin{xltabular}{\linewidth}{l>{\hsize.2\hsize}XXX}
  \caption{Full-width multi-page table in one-column mode}\\
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endfirsthead
  \textbf{C1} & \textbf{C2} & \textbf{C3} & \textbf{C4} \\
  \endhead
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{Continued on next page}} \\ 
  \endfoot
  \multicolumn{4}{r}{{End}} \\
  \endlastfoot
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] \\
  Text & Some other text here & \lipsum[11] & \lipsum[11] 
\end{xltabular}

\newpage
\twocolumn
\lipsum[10-14]
\end{document}

Thanks to David Carlisle for pointing me to that package.

mfg
  • 499