Re: Columns with marking characters are exported to latex (Org 8)

[Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com>]

Nick Dokos <ndokos@gmail.com> writes:

> Thorsten Grothe <info@th-grothe.de> writes:
>
>> Hallo Nick,
>>
>> * Nick Dokos, 19.08.2014 00:13:53:
>>
>>> Sorry - disregard that. I didn't test with radio tables, I just did a
>>> straight export. I'll try radio tables later.
>>
>> the attached file is a showing the latex code after the export from
>> orgtbl -- see the result, I made some small comments on it...
>
> Yes, not only can I reproduce it, I bisected it and (surprise!)  the
> bisection fingered commit 79873390edd26a44cefc2050c7af470a7ed8fd07: my
> "fix" to your previous complaint:
>
>         http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.orgmode/88634
>
> I'll take another look at org-table-clean-before-export.

OK - I have taken a closer look and I think my "fix" was wrong: I'm
going to revert it.

That will of course restore the previous behaviour where a first column
that's empty is deleted on export. There is an argument to be made that
that is "correct" behaviour: first, both the original version and
Achim's rewrite implement that behaviour, but also the relevant section
of the manual (section 3.5.10, Advanced Features) which lists the
special first column characters includes <space> among them.

That leaves the somewhat counterintuitive case of a completely empty
first column which is therefore deemed special and gets stripped. This
could be "fixed" as a special case but instead I propose to document that
behaviour in the above section, with a suggested workaround: if you
really, really want an empty first column, then add a second one.

WDYT?

-- 
Nick