[tex4ht] dcolumn package interference.

[Radhakrishnan CV]

On 31-Aug-2010, at 10:41 PM, Karl Berry wrote:

> Hi Thomas,
> 
>    Use of the dcolumn package 
> 
> I've never heard of the dcolumn package, sorry.

It is David Carslile's package to fake decimal align in LaTeX tabular and is part of tools bundle of LaTeX. dcolumn splits each column (with a D specifier) further into three columns with <right> <center> <left> alignments respectively, so that you get a kind of alignment of digits around the centered column which acts as an alignment point. It is a clever way indeed to tweak TeX's halign and tabular macros.

But dcolumn will not work if you happen to reconfigure $ in TeX4ht. The best way will be to reconfigure dcolumn also if you want to change the functionality of $. The following will work fine:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage{dcolumn}

\begin{document}

\Configure{$}{\PicMath}{\EndPicMath}{}

$\alpha+\beta=2$

\Configure{dcolumn}{\Configure{$}{}{}{}}{\Configure{$}{\PicMath}{\EndPicMath}{}}

\begin{tabular}{D{.}{.}{-1}D{.}{.}{-1}D{.}{.}{-1}D{.}{.}{-1}}
      -10.00     &    7776.0     &     -10.00     &      8.0         \\
       -5.00     &    19.5       &      -5.00     &      1.25        \\
     \(\alpha\)  & \(\beta\).0   & \(\gamma\).0   &      1.25        \\
\end{tabular}

$\alpha+\beta=2$

\end{document}

But be warned, you will not get alignment of decimal columns as you would expect.

>    After some searching I have found the following commands:
>    ...
> 
> If you're going to be using tex4ht to this extent, I strongly advise
> delving into its code and trying to understand what it does.  It's not
> easy, but neither CVR nor I have infinite time to devote to the project.
> More developers are needed!

I would echo what Karl has told above. We will try our best to devote as much time as possible to solve problems when users find a glitch. If users want html output of their documents, it would be nice, if they care this point while authoring so that some of the formatting code can be inserted for conditional execution depending on the output. Since html and TeX have different paradigms of formatting, certain things are very easy to do in CSS and some through TeX. A little more investment of efforts will make life easier instead of wanting to translate every TeX nuances or clever macros into other markup schemes. 

Best regards
-- 
Radhakrishnan

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/pkcs7-signature
Size: 2609 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://tug.org/pipermail/tex4ht/attachments/20100901/5947dfe4/attachment-0001.bin>