[texhax] Modifying LaTeX tables

[Andy Farnell]

Scripts are a great answer. For my textbook I eventually
developed a build script (Make or Perl are useful component choices)
to process every source, regenerating data if something changed.
This part is essential to avoid long build times that revise
data even if it hasn't changed.

The idea is to keep the authorative sources of data at the root of
the build process and eliminate every manual step you can.

Many popular packages like Matlab, Octave, R 
can export latex table forms with a suitable function/plugin.

If you're building a large document, thesis, report, or textbook 
then the time spent writing a little script is quickly repaid.

Exporters
 
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2009/02/msg00425.html
http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/authors/30876

Make
http://www.cs.indiana.edu/classes/c304/Makefiles.html
http://www.manpagez.com/man/1/make/
http://www.cs.duke.edu/~ola/courses/programming/Makefiles/Makefiles.html

Use Make with LaTeX
http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~bsd/tex/
http://web.mit.edu/~jcrost/www/latexmake.html

Sed, Awk
http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html#uh-0
http://www.gnu.org/software/sed/manual/sed.html
http://www.vectorsite.net/tsawk.html
http://www.cs.hmc.edu/tech_docs/qref/awk.html

May be useful to you
http://www.lafferty.ca/software/pbook/



On Sun, 7 Jun 2009 22:16:19 +0200
Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:

> On 7 June 2009 Sam Albers wrote:
> 
>  > Hello all,
>  > 
>  > I have a general methodology question concerning tables in LaTeX and I was
>  > just wondering what the collective wisdom of the list thought.
>  > 
>  > Currently I am making tables using a spreadsheet then saving the file as a
>  > .csv file, replacing commas with an ampersand and then formatting the table
>  > to include in a .tex file. The problem I am running into is that if I want
>  > to modify the table after this process (say add a column) I have to start
>  > from scratch at the spreadsheet level which can be fairly time consuming. I
>  > just wondering what other people do to make this more efficient. That is,
>  > how do people go about making tables and modifying then after some edits
>  > have been made.
> 
> I'm not using spreadsheets, but I often have the need to do something
> more than once.  I usually write a little Perl script, but every other
> scripting language is fine as well.
> 
> There is also an experimental package on CTAN, but I don't know
> anything about it:
> 
>    http://dante.ctan.org/CTAN/macros/latex/exptl/delimtxt/
> 
> Regards,
>   Reinhard
> 
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-3373112
> Marschnerstr. 25
> D-30167 Hannover	                      mailto:reinhard.kotucha at web.de
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Microsoft isn't the answer. Microsoft is the question, and the answer is NO.
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> TeX FAQ: http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq
> Mailing list archives: http://tug.org/pipermail/texhax/
> More links: http://tug.org/begin.html
> 
> Automated subscription management: http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax
> Human mailing list managers: postmaster at tug.org


-- 
Use the source