Re: [AUCTeX] Some hints for editing tables

[jfbu]

Hi Mosè and Joost,

Le 18 nov. 2015 à 23:52, Mosè Giordano <address@hidden> a écrit :

> Hi Joost,
> 
> 2015-11-17 13:18 GMT+01:00 Joost Kremers <address@hidden>:
>> If you do decide to take on the challenge, here's a few things to take
>> into consideration:
> 
> Well, it was more a dream than a declaration of action, I'm not going
> to work on that ;-)   org has its own simple syntax for tables and it
> works very well, but editing real LaTeX tables requires much more
> attention, for example they can be split over lines (I don't think
> it's the case for org).

I am going off-topic here, but it could be possible to address this
issue at the TeX level: I mean by this define a LaTeX environment for
tables which would use org-syntax. Thus you could have the goodies
you mention on the Emacs editing side, and the LaTeX compilation would
proceed directly.

For example TeX allows at the inner core any choice of character for
tabulation in alignments, thus we could use | rather than &. Of course
higher level structures will perhaps really need a &, but then they
can be rewritten to work with |. (use of | as tabulation means one
has to address how to use it as standard character elsewhere)

(for example the table in the screenshot provided by Joost can definitely
be analyzed at TeX macro level, if the goal is to produce simple centered
columns; I don't know how org says to use left or right aligned columns)

I mention this as a theoretical possibility ! 
(and now I am going to go and check org documentation for
its table syntax and realize I posted too hastily this...)

best,
Jean-François