Table column heads: Treat the first row of a table as a heading row
How does Wikipublisher recognise and process table column headings?
An eagle ornament used to decorate a chapter end page
In Tip 00018, we described how Wikipublisher processes table markup. This tip looks in more detail at how it handles column headings, which give tables a more professional appearance.
| Heading 1 | Heading 2 |
|---|---|
| first row, first column | first row, second column |
| second row, first column | second row, second column |
In Sample table with headings, both columns in the first row use the PmWiki heading markup for simple tables. Wikipublisher detects this and treats the row as a table heading. This has 2 effects:
- it inserts a hair rule after the heading row (thinner than the top and bottom rules)
- if class=long, the heading and rule are printed on each page as a running head
If some of the cells in the first row contain normal text, Wikipublisher treats it as a regular row. Sometimes, we want to leave one or more cells in the first row blank — for example, the first cell when the first column contains row headings. If the empty cells contain a non-breaking space (backtick-space) and other cells contain headings, Wikipublisher treats the row as a heading row.
The PmWiki markup for advanced tables does not support heading cells explicitly. However, Wikipublisher treats the following first row markup as if it were a heading (the text must use the strong markup and must be on the same line as the (:cell:) directive):
(:cellnr:)'''Heading1 text'''
(:cell:)'''Heading2 text'''
If the advanced table crosses a page boundary, the first row becomes a running head. This is the only visible effect; in contrast to simple tables, Wikipublisher prints a hair rule between all rows of an advanced table.
Currently, Wikipublisher does not support multi-row headings for either simple or advanced tables.
Category: typography
