Thanks for the thoughts, Tim. My preference is generally to work in HTML, and in fact if I had a decent platform to work on I could just use a container class and grid or flex layouts, but the learning management system at my institution strips out most styling information when HTML is uploaded, so I will probably need a real table. I odn't think I could really handle doing this in latex. I am a terrible latex user! On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 9:27 PM Tim Cross wrote: > > Matt Price writes: > > > I have to write a number of text-heavy documents which need to be > delivered as tables with wrapped paragraphs in most cells. Working directly > in > > table format is pretty arduous and uncomfortable. Has anyone ever > written a function to accept a list or subtree as input and process it into > a table? > > > > If anyone has done something similar, I'd love some tips! > > No, have not done that. What formats do you need to export the documents > in? > > I ask because if all you need to produce is Latex derived documents > (i.e. PDF, ps etc) and you do plan to write a function yourself to do > this, I would work backwards. Latex tables are not very good for your > use case, but Latex can support what you want to do. Most of the Latex > table packages are not terribly good at formatting tables containing > paragraphs of data. They will typically require lots of hand tweaking to > get the formatting looking right. Getting the right latex package to > support what you need to do will make the function you will need to > write a lot easier. Therefore, I would start with a search of the latex > package archives to find the right package and then write an elisp > function that generates a latex block which formats your subtree using > that package. You probably want something which will format a table with > minipage or similar environments in the cells. > > -- > Tim Cross > >