I suspect that tables are the curse of LaTeX/LyX at best. I remember being horrified the first time I saw a LaTeX table layout.
I suppose it depends on where your original numbers for the table are coming from but there may be some help. I am just a real beginner with LyX (and LaTex too for that matter) but in the stats environment R ([url=http://www.r-project.org/][b]R[/b][/url]) there are a number of packages / functions/ who-knows-what that can output some rather nice tables. Whether or not they would do exactly the spanners that you need is another matter. R integrates fairly smoothly with LyX through the Sweave or kintr packages (or so some people say) so if you can get the data in a reasonable format in R then it may not be too bad to simply produce the tables using knitr or Sweave. I suspect that something like Matlab , SAS or Stata can do something similar but I have never used them. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5465314/tools-for-making-latex-tables-in-r http://www.r-statistics.com/2013/01/stargazer-package-for-beautiful-latex-tables-from-r-statistical-models-output/ ________________________________ From: Marshall Feldman <ma...@uri.edu> To: John Kane <jrkrid...@yahoo.ca> Cc: "lyx-users@lists.lyx.org" <lyx-users@lists.lyx.org>; Scott Kostyshak <skost...@princeton.edu> Sent: Sunday, April 28, 2013 4:14:58 PM Subject: Re: Spanners in tables Tanks, John. The second table is almost what I want. The only change is to remove the bottom border from the cell to the left of the "Result" spanner. This approach works, but I was hoping there's an easier way in LyX. The whole idea of keeping presentation separate from content would imply that tables can be formatted according to different styles at the push of a button. Nonetheless, this works. Marsh On 4/27/13 9:55 AM, John Kane wrote: Hi Marshall, > >I think that it can be done fairly easily by inserting some extra columns and then using the multi-column approach. See the second table in the attached file. Is that what you wanted.? > > > > > > >________________________________ > From: Marshall Feldman <ma...@uri.edu> >To: lyx-users@lists.lyx.org >Cc: Scott Kostyshak <skost...@princeton.edu> >Sent: Friday, April 26, 2013 4:57:01 PM >Subject: Re: Spanners in tables > > > > > >On 4/26/13 4:12 PM, Scott Kostyshak wrote: > >On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 3:00 PM, Marshall Feldman <ma...@uri.edu> wrote: >>Hello, The standard format for formal tables uses spanners to indicate >>columns with similar, related content. I am using LyX with the "formal" tables option set to on. But I don't see how to introduce spanners into a table.. For example, suppose a table has two lines of headings. Suppose further that row 1 has "Revenue" as a heading and that below this the table has two headings, "Sales" and "Interest." So we would like the line beneath "Revenue" to span two columns with a solid line, and for there to be enough space at the edges of the spanned columns for the reader to make out that the spanner is indeed separate from adjacent columns. See this page for examples. So how does one handle spanners in LyX? >>Hi Marshall, If I understand correctly, what you refer to as "spanners" LyX >>would refer to as "multi-column". In a table, select a couple of rows and click on "multi-column" in the table toolbar (which is at the bottom of the screen and is activated when the cursor is in a table). Best, Scott Thanks, Scott. > >Well it's not exactly multicolumn, at least not how I understand this term. A cell that's multicolumn spans more than one column. This relates to spanners, but it's only part of the issue. > >A spanner is a line under the heading for the multicolumn cell. The line does not run the full width of the original columns that went into the multicolumn cell. Since the spanner typically serves as a heading indicating which columns fall under the heading, there has to be some way to distinguish the columns falling under the heading from other, adjacent columns. This is why the spanner line is shorter than the combined widths of the original columns: whitespace on either side of the line separates it from lines in adjacent cells. > >I'll try to draw a picture: > > Greetings Century >Holiday --------------------------- -------------- ><= These dashed lines are "spanners" > Coming Going 18 19 >20 21 >Mardis Gras Want beads? Happy Mardi Gras X X >Xmas Merry Xmas Merry Xmas X X X > > >Thanks for your help. > > Marsh > > >
