Are there better ways to export wide LaTeX tables/figures?

* Are there better ways to export wide LaTeX tables/figures?
       [not found] <20101208142507.D67F6C400B0@mx8.webfaction.com>
@ 2010-12-09  2:08 ` Kai
  2010-12-09 17:16   ` Thomas S. Dye
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 2+ messages in thread
From: Kai @ 2010-12-09  2:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-orgmode

  Hi all,

After spending a few hours experimenting with orgmode's exporting of 
tables to LaTeX, I've got three problems to do with wide tables/figures, 
which I'm hoping have smarter solutions that what I could find:

1) When one has a table of even moderate width it will "run off the 
page" by default when exported to LaTeX and then pdf-published, since by 
default LaTeX will not automatically fit the column sizes to the page 
width, nor wrap text within cells to fit.  As far as I can tell, within 
orgmode, one has to do manual tweaking in the +ATTR_LaTeX line of the 
table like:

#+ATTR_LaTeX: tabular width=\textwidth 
align=|p{1.8cm}|p{1.5cm}|p{1.5cm}|p{1.3cm}|

...and set the column widths manually (in the example above, manually 
set four column widths).  Is there a better way to do this from within 
orgmode?

2) Now after one does all that hand-tweaking and trial and error of 
setting the LaTeX table column widths manually, the printed table may 
finally fit on the page, BUT still be wider than \textwidth, and appear 
off-center (it will be aligned on the left, but extend past the right 
margin).  I found this technique of centering the over-wide table/figure 
using \makebox:
http://texblog.net/latex-archive/layout/centering-figure-table/
...which basically involves wrapping the LaTeX table code with  
"\noindent\makebox[\textwidth]{%" and a closing curly brace, "}".  But I 
could not find a way to specify that within orgmode; if I have something 
like the following it will not work, the table does not end up being 
exported:

#+LaTeX: \noindent\makebox[\textwidth]{%

#+CAPTION: A wide table.
#+LABEL: tbl:wide_table
#+ATTR_LaTeX: tabular width=\textwidth 
align=|p{1.8cm}|p{1.5cm}|p{1.5cm}|p{1.3cm}|p{2cm}|p{2.25cm}|p{1.7cm}|
| Technology | Stack Efficiency | System Efficiency | Lifetime [years] | 
Degradation [microV/h] | Estimated High-volume manufacturing cost [2007 
Euros/kW] | Target Sale Price [2007 Euros/kW] |
|------------+------------------+-------------------+------------------+------------------------+----------------------------------------------------------+-----------------------------------|
| AFC        |         0.43-0.5 |         0.27-0.32 |          0.5-1.1 
|                  10-30 
|                                                  325-675 
|                           120-230 |

#+LaTeX: %}

Is there any way to specify from the orgmode file that the (too wide) 
exported LaTeX table should be absolutely centered in the page, so as to 
avoid manual fixes per table in the tex file after exporting?  Same 
question applies to large images that one wants wider than \textwidth, 
yet centered within the page - is there a way to do it cleanly?

3) Finally, is there a way to specify a smaller text size for tables 
consistently?  e.g. within the exported LaTex file, one could manually 
specify \footnotesize table text like:

\begin{table}[htb]\footnotesize

But is there a way to specify that from orgmode, and avoid post-export 
manual fixes in the tex file?

Thanks in advance, any and all help appreciated!

K

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