On 2014-03-30, Uwe Stöhr wrote: > Am 30.03.2014 07:57, schrieb Carsten Jahn:
>> I didnt mean long tables but wide ones, and word, as much as I hate to >> admit, is better in that one IMHO, as you could just drag your table till >> it fits, > That is just the opposite of the WYSIWYM concept of LyX and LaTeX. The > concept is to let the software decide after professional rules what > means "it fits". However, automatic table width is a real shortcoming of LaTeX. Things work fine, as long as all cell entries are short one-liners. However, * there is no "professional rule" for line wrapping in a column unless it has a fixed width. * without looking at the output, you cannot know, whether a table fits on the page or is too wide!!! * there is no support for manual line-breaks in a column without fixed width (unless you use \shortstack in an ERT). * setting a fixed width requires opening a dialogue and inserting values (if you want a fixed width for the whole table, this requires complicated mathematical calculations as well - in this case the trial and error method may even be faster than looking up the documentation on column separating space etc...). All this is a clear distraction from concentrating on content and WWAATS (what we are able to show) is still far from what I mean. >> while you have to manually input the parameters in LyX and compile >> it for every trial and error. > Note that this is not the way you should go. If you try to fit > everything as you like it all the time you look a lot of time and when > you modify your document you will have to do this again and again. So > better concentrate on writing and do the fine-tuning when the document > is really ready. However, this still means I cannot see the whole table unless "fine tuning" and I have to fine tune (fixing tables maybe 5 times as wide as the page) by calculating column widths and inserting the result for every table at the end of the process. If it were not for the advantages in other parts of the process, I would select/recomment an alternative system. Let's be honest about both, strenghts and weaknesses. Günter
