Re: Size and placement of images in table in PDF export

[Nick Dokos <nicholas.dokos@hp.com>]

Michael Hannon <jm_hannon@yahoo.com> wrote:

> Greetings.  I've got another export question.  If I put two small images into
> an Org-mode table and export the containing document to HTML, I see the two
> images displayed side-by-side in an area of the page that is at least roughly
> the actual size of the concatenated images.
> 
> If I export the same document to PDF, the two images are again displayed
> side-by-side, but image on the left is magnified to take up most of the
> horizontal space on the page; the image on the right is also magnified and
> runs off the page to the right.
> 
> I'm not sure how to provide a simple, self-contained example of this.  The
> structure of the table is:
> 
>     | [[./x1.jpg]] | [[./x2.jpg]] |
> 
> The images themselves are "small":
> 
>   $ identify x*.jpg
>   x1.jpg JPEG 189x142 189x142+0+0 8-bit DirectClass 9.56KB 0.000u 0:00.000
>   x2.jpg[1] JPEG 190x160 190x160+0+0 8-bit DirectClass 55.6KB 0.000u 0:00.000
> 
> If I just print the images from an image viewer, each of them comes out on
> paper at about 2.5in (~64 mm) in width.
> 
> Is there some way to override the default size/placement of the images in PDF
> export?
> 

The trouble is that the default option says "width=.9\\linewidth" so
if you try to put two of them on the same "line", they end up overflowing
the page. For an image not inside a table, you could reset that with

#+ATTR_LaTeX: width=.4\\linewidth

but this is a rather blunt instrument: for images inside a table, it
applies not only to the images but also to the table (and it ends up
producing a syntactically incorrect latex program - that's probably
a bug in the latex exporter.)

The following variation does work however:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+BIND: org-export-latex-image-default-option "width=.4\\linewidth"

* foo

| col1         | col2         |
|--------------+--------------|
| [[./x1.jpg]] | [[./x2.jpg]] |
|              |              |
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Of course, if you try to put three images on the line, you'll have to
recalibrate the factor (you can also use absolute dimensions: width=3cm).

There is also this second variation, which uses height, rather than width: the
latex exporter thinks height is not relevant to tables, so it does not
try to give that attribute to the table, just to the images:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
* foo

#+ATTR_LaTeX: height=2cm

| col1         | col2         |
|--------------+--------------|
| [[./x1.jpg]] | [[./x2.jpg]] |
|              |              |
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

but you can also use the BIND form too:

#+BIND: org-export-latex-image-default-option "height=2cm"


Note btw, that the width in the first case (and the height in the
second case) is the same for both images. AFAICT, there is no way
to give different dimensions to the two images - except for the
following variation.

The third variation allows the two images to have their "natural"
dimensions:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
#+BIND: org-export-latex-image-default-option ""

* foo

| col1         | col2         |
|--------------+--------------|
| [[./x1.jpg]] | [[./x2.jpg]] |
|              |              |
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Nick