[Feature Request] Cross headings in tables

[Achim Gratz <Stromeko@nexgo.de>]

Now that I've started exporting some org files (to HTML mostly), I run
into some limitations here and there.  I've worked around most of them,
but have not been able to do anything about this (other than editing the
resulting HTML):

I have some tables where I used (without thinking much about it)
cross headings like this:

|----------+---------------------+-----------------|
| Header   | some more           | and more        |
| actually | multi-line headings | just work!      |
|----------+---------------------+-----------------|
| item     | stuff               | things          |
| etc.     | pp.                 | ad nauseam      |
|----------+---------------------+-----------------|
| Header   | to keep             | things together |
|----------+---------------------+-----------------|
| ...      |                     |                 |
|          | ...                 |                 |
|          |                     | ...             |
|----------+---------------------+-----------------|

I don't want to rip these apart into separate tables since that causes
the different parts to all have different widths (both in the source and
the export) and I really need these to line up and be just a single
table.

I guess that I could somehow manage to use the "splicing" of tables to
get the HTML export done, but I'd have that problem again for each
export backend.  Also, this would interrupt the table in the source and
make a formatting mess unless I'd define the column width for each of
the table parts by hand (which is equally undesirable).

So I'd like to have first-class cross headings, maybe like this:

|----------+-----------+-----------------|
| Header   | some more | and more        |
|----------+-----------+-----------------|
| item     | stuff     | things          |
| etc.     | pp.       | ad nauseam      |
|----------+-----------+-----------------|
|> Header  | to keep   | things together |
|----------+-----------+-----------------|
|          | ...       |                 |
|----------+-----------+-----------------|

So, the first heading would be determined by the first horizontal
separator inside the table (for backwards compatibility) and any
following heading would need get some special syntax (like the "|>"
above, but anything that doesn't collide with existing syntax will just
be fine I think).  If there's a heading marker before the first
horizontal separation, it should probably take precedence over the
backwards-compatible markup.  That would also enable to have table
headings without a separator, something that's not possible today.


Regards,
Achim.
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