Re: making coloured tables

[Andras Major <andras.g.major@gmail.com>]

I have an idea how my feature could be implemented, and it consists of
two parts.

- introduce a special row, or extend the "/" type used for colgroup
and narrowing, to specify hidden (non-export) columns and special tag
columns;

- in that special row, there are two new special entries, say "T<" and
"T>" which specify that the contents of each cell in that column
should be exported into the <td> tag of the cell to the left or to the
right.

This way, the <td> tag can be set from within the table for each
relevant cell. The only drawback is that all this is backend-specific,
it only works for HTML, not for PDF in the way I've just described.

  András


On 8/1/11, Sebastien Vauban <wxhgmqzgwmuf@spammotel.com> wrote:
> 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
>
>
>