[XeTeX] Making nice tables

[Will Robertson]

On Nov 22, 2007 3:37 PM, Mike Maxwell <maxwell at umiacs.umd.edu> wrote:
> I'm know on some forums I'd take flak for this posting, but maybe you
> guys are nicer.

:)

> A couple things surprise me about this.  First, I am a bit surprised
> that Tex prefers to break this table across the page, rather than float
> it like Word does.

LaTeX cannot switch between the two: either your table floats or it is
fixed in place, in which case it can break across pages. Logically
there doesn't seem to be any way to reconcile those two ideas. LaTeX
also doesn't agree with the idea of leaving gaping holes in the text;
you'll need to force them with \newpage if you want that.

> But even more surprising to me is the mess that *tex makes of last line
> of this broken table.  I realize tables are hard, and footnotes make the
> problem of page layout still harder, but I would have thought it would
> get this right.

Well, typesetting Urdu wasn't exactly in the spec when longtable was
written >10 years ago! :)
You might also like to try the supertabular, which uses a different
algorithm to do the same thing as longtable. Actually I just looked it
up and it seems that xtab is an improved version of supertabular:
  <http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/help/Catalogue/entries/xtab.html>

To look at changing the way your footnotes work, check out both
footmisc and bigfoot. In some cases their options are mutually
exclusive but they *should* give you enough leeway.

Having said all of this, an example of the actual source would be very
useful in order to get better advice. If you can provide only enough
to demonstrate the problem you've shown, so much the better.

Hope this helps,
Will