Re: making coloured tables

["Sebastien Vauban" <wxhgmqzgwmuf-geNee64TY+gS+FvcfC7Uqw@public.gmane.org>]

Hi Andras,

Andras Major wrote:
>> Andras Major wrote:
>>> I'm really intrigued by org-mode's table and spreadsheet functionality and
>>> would like to use it for those cases where I found excel and gnumeric
>>> impractically cumbersome.
>>>
>>> What I want are two slightly diffent things:
>>>
>>> - Make tables that have cells with individual background colours when
>>>   exported as HTML or PDF.
>>>
>>> - Make tables that have cells with background colours and typeface details
>>>   (bold, italic, etc.) based on contents of either the cells themselves or
>>>   other cells in the table. (Example: mark all negative numerical values
>>>   of a table with a red background.)
>>>
>>> Furthermore, the colouring should be portable, i.e. independent of the
>>> settings in .emacs.
>>
>> I add wishes on the above list. Maybe someone will be able to implement
>> them, if they seem to make sense... So, here's my idea: having some
>> automagic style (background) applied on the cells to distinguish:
>>
>> - the input cells (the ones you cannot delete... without troubles): they
>>   don't have any formula associated with them
>>
>> - the final result cells: the ones with computed results
>>
>> - the other ones, whose content is computed, but serves as input to other
>>   cells.
>>
>> Would these be in different colors, I think it would make the reading of
>> tables much more efficient. And, as far as I know, this does not exist yet
>> in tools like Excel -- though people can manually apply such color
>> conventions.
>
> I was thinking along slightly different lines. We have a customizable <td>
> tag in HTML export already, but that customization isn't very flexible. If
> we could have something like a <td> tag that can be set from values in the
> table, or by Lisp code, then I think that would solve my problems.

My above feature of the wishlist isn't for export -- I misread your original
post. Just speaking of editing feature in the Org buffer, for giving more
insight on formulas in tables.

These "color features" weren't intended IMHO for export. So the 2 "problems"
are in fact apart from each other.

> It's important, however, that setting the export tag must be local to the
> Org file so I can set it there instead of the global .emacs.

Best regards,
  Seb

-- 
Sebastien Vauban