[texhax] tabular

[Uwe Lück]

At 01:25 08.04.08, Axel E. Retif wrote:
>On  7 Apr, 2008, at 13:26, Bryan W. Lepore wrote:
>
>
> > what is the parameter that sets the width of table cells?
> >
> > if it exists, can i put such a \renewtablecellwidth in the actual
> > tabular
> > environment to reset it to the original value?
>
>Look into ``The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX'', pp. 41 & ff.:
>
>http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
>
>Chances are you already have it ---in your terminal or at the Command
>Prompt type
>
>texdoc lshort
>
>Also, TUG India ``LaTeX Primer'', pp. 62 & ff.:
>
>http://sarovar.org/frs/?group_id=48&release_id=105
>
>is an excellent manual.

... or simply, again Andy Robert's tutorial page on tables:

     http://www.andy-roberts.net/misc/latex/latextutorial4.html

However, I doubt that you will find such a parameter there
(I guess this is why Bryan Lepore is asking here).
The width of ordinary c, l, r cells is the maximal width of entries there,
the width of p{<width>} cells is <width>.

Something in the direction of such a parameter comes with tabular*
and its refinements or variants (may perhaps been considered so).

There are many sophisticated packages for tables some of which
provide a number of extra parameters:

     ftp://www.dante.de/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/bytopic.html#tables

However, one should rather start with simple questions, like:
For which purpose do you need such a parameter?
It may turn out that you don't need such a parameter for your purpose.
The question may then have been an instance of

     http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#goal

!? -- Uwe.