Table Implementation

[gettalong]

The one big thing missing from the current documentation creation facilities is support for easy table creation. The main reason for this is that tables, especially ones that auto-calculate column widths, are complex beasts.

So to fill this gap I'm considering implementing fixed column width tables first which should already cover many use case. There are still some things to consider and I wanted to ask the community what they would like to see in a table implementation.

Here is a list of potential features of such a table implementation:

• Defining a simple table containing only some text (think invoice item listings) using two dimensional arrays
• Defining a complex table by allowing any number of boxes in a table cell
• Styling the whole table, rows, columns and/or individual cells, with later defined styling information overriding prior ones. E.g. if a column style says padding: 10 and then a row style says padding: [10, 5], the latter would be used.
• Support for header and footer rows
• Support for displaying the header and footer rows on each split part of a table (think part of the table on the first page and the rest on the second page)
• Creating row and column spans

What other features would you like to see in the table implementation? Be as detailed as you like in your comment! 😁

[gettalong]

A first implementation of the TableBox class now exists in the devel branch - see https://github.com/gettalong/hexapdf/blob/devel/lib/hexapdf/layout/table_box.rb#L43-L93

I have ticked the respective features that are currently implemented.

There is still way room for improvement:

• no support in the HexaPDF::Document::Layout module for easily creating a table,
• no easy way to style certain rows or columns,
• no easy way to style nice borders

However, basic things are working well already, including splitting a table:

[gettalong]

Support for header rows and footer rows is now also implemented. Header and footer rows are shown for all split boxes, like in the example below:

[gettalong]

The next version of HexaPDF will include this functionality 🎉