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4.4 Previous approaches
¶4.4.1 The Typewriter Tab Stop Model
¶4.4.2 tbl
¶4.4.3 TEX
¶4.4.4 TABLE
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4.1 What is a table?
form of communication
"Tables offer authors and editors a useful means of presenting large amounts of detailed information in small space. A simple table . . . can often give information that would require several paragraphs to present textually and can do so with greater clarity. Tabular presentation is not simply the best but usually the only way that large quantities of individual, similar facts can be arranged." [A Manual of Style, Chicago, 1969, p 273]
"ta-ble n. 13. An orderly written, typed, or printed display of data, especially a rectangular array exhibiting one or more characteristics of designated entities or categories. 14. An abbreviated list, as of contents; a synopsis. [Am. Her. Dictionary]
table typography is hard
"The principles of table making involve matters of taste, convention, typography, aesthetics, and honesty, in addition to the principles of quantification." [Tabular Presentation, p 497]
"Tabular setting has proved both the easiest and the most difficult form of composition to bring under computer control. Because tabular setting is mainly for numeric data, it might seem strange that there should be any difficulty in providing computer-generated drive-tapes for photoset tables." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 189]
more than just computed data
"While many tables of physical and scientific data are being compiled by computer, there is still a requirement to include these data in technical publications because they are considered of interest to the reader who may not have access to the generating algorithms even if he is a computer user. The publication of such data in printed form may also be considered necessary to establish the status of the author! It would appear that the need for tabular composition in general bookwork will continue for some time." [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-15]
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4.2 Early table formatting systems
early typesetting systems did tables
[Barnett 1965, Reid 1979, NBS 1962, Phillips 1979]
simple problems led to simple solutions
"But there are really two very different categories of tabular composition: One comprises a book of similar tables in which the values shown can be calculated by program algorithms from the minimum of data input, and the other consists of the tables appearing in technical texts. In the first case the style is similar for many consecutive pages, but in the second case each table, and there are sometimes several tables on the same page, has different column widths, different numbers of columns, and also ranges the entries differently, both vertically and horizontally; in addition, each table may have different complex box headings." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 189]
data generated by computer presented in tables
why were the solutions simple?
"The significance of this early work in tabular composition is that all the typographic parameters were defined by program." [Arthur H. Phillips, Handbook of Computer-Aided Composition, p 195]
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4.3 Why are tables hard?
tables are complicated
"These complications will tend to keep interactive terminals employed for page make-up and with soft-copy proofs on page view terminals." [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-11]
Tables are two-dimensional: rows and columns
In galleys, text words become lines and lines become pages. Constraint is line length and H&J algorithms break lines appropriately.
In tables, text words become table entries, entries are aligned simultaneously into rows and columns. Constraints are page width and entry alignment both horizontally and vertically.
Table entries may flow from one to another (especially when treating free form grid designs as a table, where pictures and captions are placed on a grid and text flowed around those elements).
US Government Printing Office defines tables
Style manual for tabular material.
Parts of a table [GPO, page 216-217 written out in English]
Some computer program support for this (batch only I believe). I read a later assessment of GPO composition tools but have lost the reference when Paxton moved.
Typeset tables require fine resolution in placement.
(sounds kind of weak)
normal text use line measure, rather long; tables deal with multiple columns and centering and small spaces between them
Spreadsheets have it easy with a matrix format.
Typewriters have it easy with fixed width characters and fixed escapments for tab stops.
Typesetters have variable width fonts on various fine resolutions (e.g. 1/10th of a point or 1/720 of an inch).
block of type model: treat table entry as an area, furniture in layout
"Tabular material is always difficult to typeset—much more so than to compose on the typewriter. This is true even though figures have a "monospaced" value. Letters do not, and therefore it is more difficult to align material or even to determine what will fit in a given space . . . The monospaced typewriter—where you can actually visualize what you are setting—is certainly the simplest way for the novice to proceed. And it will not be an easy task for the typesetter to imitate what the typist has done." [Seybold, Fundamentals of Photocomposition, p 14]
Table structure
entry, row, column, table hierarchy
spanned columns or rows, nested ownership
why is this hard? editing maybe? spreading attributes to siblings in row or column?
Row and column alignment:
Align table entries within its row or column.
Headings may span several rows or columns.
Equally spaced rows or columns independent of content.
Foldable columns (or sets of columns) continued in adjacent columns and balanced.
Alignment choices:
Horizontal alignment:
flush left, flush right,
center,
align on character (for example, decimal point, multiplication sign)
Vertical alignment:
flush top, flush bottom,
top baseline, bottom baseline,
center, center on top baseline, center on bottom baseline
GPO sample table, page 189, avoid the use of scabbards
Style treatment of tables may be grouped:
Table may have different type attributes than surrounding text.
A row or column may be distinguished with different type attributes.
A table entry may have different attributes.
A table entry might contain any text or illustration permissible by the formatter.
Whitespace allowances:
Bearoff distances above, below, to left, to right of table entry.
Intrusions permitted for footnote marks or glosses.
Rules and decorations:
Rules along row or column boundaries
"Ruled tables, for example, are usual in the publications of this press, in part because Monotype composition has always been readily available. For a publisher who is restricted to Linotype, open tables or tables with horizontal rules alone may be the only practical way tabular matter can be arranged." [Manual of Style, Chicago, 1969, p 273] [it would be interesting to compare the 13th edition on this suggestion!]
Rule patterns, such as double rules, thick-thin pairs, etc.
rules of different weights; medium rule between table heading and table, and below table; fine rule between column headings and columns [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
Various weights and patterns or rules or borders
Background tints for table entries or whole rows or columns.
Rules within boxes, for example, for total of a column of entries.
Braces to group entries horizontally or vertically in a column
GPO page 193 has a sample table with lots of braces
Leaders (the dots that lead your eye):
Leaders may be replicated characters or rules.
Congruence which arranges that replication pattern aligns. Congruence of several different sizes of leaders.
Leaders run from one column into another and possible across several columns.
Footnotes within tables:
Footnote may be included with table entry, if the entry is large.
Footnotes may be collected at the bottom of the table, outside the table layout but within the space allocated in the page layout.
Footnotes at the bottom of the same page (?) as the table formatting. That is the footnotes are continued in the stream of footnotes within the text. (Sounds a bit hokey to me.)
Special treatments to make a table fit.
Rotate headings to typeset vertically to reduce column width. Possibly set text vertically with characters horizontally (vertical stack arrangement).
table orientation normally upright
column headings that are much wider than rest of column turned sideways with descenders to the right [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
Reduce size of type within table.
tables in smaller type, although majority in text size and minority in smaller size preferred [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
Compress text horizontally to make characters narrower (reduce the set size)
Reduce whitespace bearoff to make table fit.
transpose columns and rows to make table fit
transpose table if table consists of more columns than rows [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
Phillips also fantasizes about computer programs to do this
mention concerns of statistical data [Leisel, Say It With Figures, p 41]
Tables may be larger than a single page:
Wide tables may be printed broadside, rotated 90 degrees (either way), so the long table dimension is along the long paper dimension.
tables wider than page turned sideways so rows read to the right, column headings that are much wider than rest of column turned sideways with descenders to the LEFT otherwise they would appear UPSIDE DOWN! [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
recto pages are preferred since a turned book will present the recto page closer to the reader. [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 271]
Tables may be laid out as facing pages in a two-page spread.
tables spread across facing pages (opening) need some form of linking; table too big printed as a folded plate! [Williamson, Methods of Book Design, p 159]
Tables may be continued on several subsequent pages.
"It would be asking rather a lot of a page make-up program to insert carried forward and brought-forward totals automatically at a table break, and indeed these were often omitted when tables were made-up by the hand compositor" [Arthur Phillips, Tabular Composition, Seybold Report, August 1979, v8, n23, pg. 23-11] [referring to the introduction of continued lines at points where table columns are broken]
split tables may not split within a column or row
perhaps column or row is repeated for readability
columns may be folded to make them fit.
Boxheads (set of column headings) or Stubs (set of row headings) may need to be repeated if table is continued. Continued headings (add the text "continued") may be necessary for such tables.
scrolling horizontally or vertically when displaying them on screens
Readability concerns are well known to those who make mathematical tables.
Grouping rows or columns by adding whitespace or rules every so many entries.
Provide eye guides, for example, thin rules between rows, thick rules every fifth row, background tints every so many rows.
Various sources of tabular materical:
Financial spreadsheets from calculator program.
Financial reports.
Program generates voluminous data.
Extracts from a database.
author composes a simple table.
Unfortunately, almost anything can be a table!
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4.4 Previous approaches
¶4.4.1 The Typewriter Tab Stop Model
fixed pitch characters lends itself to measurements as character counts
typewriters: tabs at marked points
computer terminals: every n characters
specifying line wrap arounds, where do lines resume after wrap around?
specifying column formatting attributes, e.g. font, size, indenting? only locally
different semantics of tab characters
set in this column versus set to this measure
Scribe centers within a pair of tab stops but flushes left or right to a tab stop
troff centers on a tab stop
¶4.4.2 tbl
whats a nice typographic touch to distinguish references to tbl?
general preprocessor for troff
can set most every layout of table
topology from row/col entry layout
anomaly: col span in topology, row span in data
geometry simple solver using Troff registers
limitations
number/string registers 2 chars
no algorithm for folded lines; requires column measure to be supplied
recursion impossible: table within a table, equation — table — equation
¶4.4.3 TEX
LaTEX and "dirty tricks" section of the TeXBook imply that tables are done with macros that emulate the facilities of tbl
¶4.4.4 TABLE
[Biggerstaff, et al] front end to tbl
object-oriented representation
study editing complex structures, tables are complex structures
layout of idiomatic graphical structures
editing primitives
cursor movements within structure
workspaces - general purpose sharing of data
selection granularity
table to characters, movement in/out granularity
TABLE lacks logical structure of table, only topology
provides no operations on logical structure
perhaps induced by tbl
data structure alternatives
1) tree; asymmetric
2) matrix: symmetric, sizing must analyze all entries in row/column
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