Re: Nesting tables with tbl

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi Blake,

Blake McBride wrote on Sun, Feb 09, 2020 at 01:50:01PM -0600:

> I have a need to nest tables as follows:

I'm reducing the number of columns (no col5 nor col8)
and lines to make the example code smaller:

> col1   col2   col3   col4
>            col6   col7
>            col6   col7
> col1   col2   col3   col4
>            col6   col7
> 
> How can I do something like this with TBL?  Can I simply nest tables?

Nesting of tables is never needed, but you can split columns
and join cells, for example as follows:

.TS
allbox tab(:);
LLSLSLS
LLLSLS
LLLSLS
LLSLSLS
LLLSLS.
col1:col2:col3:col4
::col6:col7
::col6:col7
col1:col2:col3:col4
::col6:col7
.TE

The allbox option is just intended for illustrative purposes,
of course it also works without that or with manual lines, e.g.:

.TS
tab(:);
L | LS | LS | LS
LL | LS | LS |
LL | LS | LS |
L | LS | LS | LS
LL | LS | LS |.
col1:col2:col3:col4
_
::col6:col7
::col6:col7
_
col1:col2:col3:col4
_
::col6:col7
.TE

If you repeatedly want to switch between the two row types,
you cannot rely on the usual default of applying the last layout
row to all remaining data rows.  You either need to specify the
layout for all lines up front or re-open the layout multiple times:

.TS
tab(:);
L | LS | LS | LS
LL | LS | LS |.
col1:col2:col3:col4
_
::col6:col7
::col6:col7
_
.T&
L | LS | LS | LS
LL | LS | LS |.
col1:col2:col3:col4
_
::col6:col7
::col6:col7
.TE

Yours,
  Ingo