How to apply alternate row coloring in a longtable in LyX?

Question

In attempting to apply an alternate table row coloring (using xcolor) in a longtable, one confronts, sooner or later, problems in compiling a PDF. In xcolor's documentation it is clearly stated, under Known Issues, that \rowcolors[\hline]... does not work with longtable.

Within tex.SE, various solutions address the issue of alternate row coloring of normal tables, i.e. How to create alternating rows in a table? A nice way for auto-alternate row-coloring every table is posted at Coloring every alternate table row (see Addendum in the end of the post).

However, there is no direct question & answer referring to the combined use of xcolor's \rowcolors command & longtable. Moreover, searching the web for work-arounds, at least one solution, involves the use of longtable and colortbl.

Is there a way to use, within LyX, the \rowcolors (set of) command(s) provided by xcolor within longtable?

Answer 1

Adapting the solution given in the Addendum of the post Coloring every alternate table row worked just fine! It was as simple as substituting tabular with longtable.

A working example

In LyX' Preamble, watch out for the % alternate rowcolors for all long-tables part of the code:

\usepackage[table]{xcolor}

% define lightgray
\definecolor{lightgray}{gray}{0.9}

% alternate rowcolors for all tables
\let\oldtabular\tabular
\let\endoldtabular\endtabular
\renewenvironment{tabular}{\rowcolors{2}{white}{lightgray}\oldtabular}{\endoldtabular}

% alternate rowcolors for all long-tables
\let\oldlongtable\longtable
\let\endoldlongtable\endlongtable
\renewenvironment{longtable}{\rowcolors{2}{white}{lightgray}\oldlongtable} {
\endoldlongtable}

% Tables

% scale tables
\usepackage{graphicx}

% rulers for tabs
\usepackage{booktabs}

In the main body construct a longtable using LyX' own longtable capacity:

Right click within a row of a table > More... > Settings > Longtable (tab) > Activate Use long table.

Example screenshots

Avoiding (grey-)coloring of the longtable-footer, can be done by explicitly instructing \rowcolor{white} or using multiple \cellcolor{white} commands in the respective row (well, the first one of the table).