[comp.text.tex] Tables bigger than one page

ben@servalan.uucp (Ben Mesander) (03/21/91)

Hello,

  I have some tables that are larger than one page that I need to 
include in a LaTeX article. I end up having to break the tables by hand
into separate tabular environments for each table. This has several
problems:

1) LaTeX's idea of "here" (the \tabular [h] optional arg) seems to be
   unlike my idea of "here," like RIGHT HERE, not half a page later.

2) When I break the table up by hand, if text before the table is
   changed in the text, I have to re-break the tables appropriately.

3) I use the \caption command to insert the "table xx.-- continued"
   in the successive tables, but this throws the table numbering off.
   How can I avoid having to hard-code in the table number on successive
   pages? I assume this is some random counter, probably with a bunch of
   "@'s" in it. :-)

4) When I break it up into separate pages, then I have to use something
   like \clearpage or other matter gets inserted between successive
   parts of my table. Again, when I modify the document, this all has to
   be re-done.

5) The table of tables listing gets thrown off, because of the extra
   table numbers from the successive tabular environments.

6) When I don't care exactly where the figure goes, I've been having
   it show up in odd places. For instance, I have a table on page 3,
   and there's room for it where I have specified (I measured), but it
   gets put at the top of the next page. Fine, except that there's a 
   paragraph started on the bottom of page 3, the figure at the top of
   page 4, and then after the figure, 1 and 3/4's line of text to finish
   the paragraph. It looks strange, and doesn't read well. Is there a
   way to tell LaTeX to insert figures between paragraphs?

Also, how can I insert a table "right here" in the text, even if the 
resulting page spacing would be non-optimal? I'd like to use the tabular
environment, so I can get the c\caption and the table of tables listing.

I am aware that some of what I want to do may be bad typography, but
that will not change the publications standards that I am required to
conform to, so please, no unhelpful comments of that sort.

I feel like I'm working against LaTeX rather than with it. I was hoping
it would be more of a "markup language" than a "text processor", which
is what I used the plain format for before I tried LaTeX. I'm hoping
someone has written an environment for tabular environments larger than
a page that has something like a \continuedcaption in it.

Ben Mesander
ben@servalan.UUCP bamesander@qvarsa.er.usgs.gov