[texhax] difference between tabular and tabularx?

[Uwe Lück]

At 22:19 13.04.06, you wrote:
>Could someone explain the major differences between the tabular and
>tabularx environments? I looked at the documentation for the memoir
>class, but the examples and results seem so similar that I don't know
>why I shouldn't just always use \tabular and \tabular*.

I wouldn't have expected that the memoir documentation documents
tabular, tabular*, tabularx -- the memoir class is just one extension
of Standard LaTeX, tabular and tabular* belong to Standard LaTeX
(extended by the array package -- see Standard manuals), and
tabularx comes from another package with its own documentation.
(Of course the memoir documention will just explain what it adds to
LaTeX, not what Standard LaTeX and other packages do.)

In the first edition of the LaTeX companion (of which I have a copy),
there is indeed some subsection comparing tabularx and tabular*.
Maybe as well in the actual second edition (which I have not seen
yet)!?

Hope this helps,
   Uwe.