On 17-Jan-09 18:40:15, Chris G wrote:

I'm looking for a simple way to create HTML tables. In particular I want to be able to create tables with various (and fairly random) row spans and column spans.

I don't really mind how it works, it can be a Web based application, a word-processor look-alike, or something that converts a text 'source' file into tables. I just want it to be simple to use.

Currently I'm using reStructuredText which does most of what I want but its "Grid Table" syntax for tables is laborious to use and its "Simple Tables" don't give me all the row and column spans I need.

I might take a look at Open Office, I assume that can generate HTML, what's its tables like?

-- Chris Green

You might consider using groff with -Thtml option. The "grohtml" front-end converts gtroff output to HTML, and groff itself has very general table-formatting capabilities.

While I've never used groff to generate HTML myself, I have very long experience in using groff for PS output of all sorts of documents, so if you're not used to groff and want some info on how to set about using it, then get in touch.

Example of source file for setting up a table in groff:

.TS tab(#); l c s s. Row#The Cols _ .T& l | c c c |. 1#col_1.1#col_1.2#col_1.3 2#col_2.1#col_2.2#col_2.3 3#col_3.1#col_3.2#col_3.3 _ .TE

which produces (on a terminal) the following:

Row The Cols ----+-----------------------------+ 1 | col_1.1 col_1.2 col_1.3 | 2 | col_2.1 col_2.2 col_2.3 | 3 | col_3.1 col_3.2 col_3.3 | ----+-----------------------------+

Ted.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Ted.Harding@manchester.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 17-Jan-09 Time: 18:59:52 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

The message 20090117184014.GA5305@v-shell-1 from Chris G cl@isbd.net contains these words:

I might take a look at Open Office, I assume that can generate HTML, what's its tables like?

Tables are more reliable than columns IME. And yes, you can save as HTML - however, I use the Notepad approach, even when using a HTML editor I (mostly) subject it to a 'Notepad' job.

When I'm writing several pages I tend to have a number of text templates to copy and paste into a text document, text etc typed in and which is then saved with a .html extension.