pillar

Shorthand notations for table column specifications in Typst.

• Introduction
• Column specification
• Number alignment
• pillar.cols()
• pillar.table()
• vline customization

Introduction

With pillar, you can significantly simplify the column setup of tables by unifying the specification of the number, alignment, and separation of columns. This package is in particular designed for scientific tables, which typically have simple styling:

In order to prepare this table with just the built-in methods, some code like the following would be required.

#table(
  columns: 5,
  align: (center,) * 4 + (right,),
  stroke: none,


  [Piano Key], table.vline(), [MIDI Number], [Note Name], [Pitch Name], table.vline(), [$f$ in Hz],
  ..
)

Using pillar, the same can be achieved with

#table(
    ..pillar.cols("c|ccc|r"),

    [Piano Key], [MIDI Number], [Note Name], [Pitch Name], [$f$ in Hz], ..
)

or alternatively

#pillar.table(
    cols: "c|ccc|r",

    [Piano Key], [MIDI Number], [Note Name], [Pitch Name], [$f$ in Hz], ..
)

Pillar is designed for interoperability. It uses the powerful standard tables and provides generated arguments for table’s columns, align, stroke, and for the specified vertical lines. This means that all features of the built-in tables (and also show and set rules) can be applied as usual.

Column specification

This package works with column specification strings. Each column is described by its alignment which can be l (left), c (center), r (right), or a (auto).

The width of a column can optionally be specified by appending a (relative) length, or fraction in square brackets to the alignment specifier, e.g., c[2cm] or r[1fr].

Vertical lines can be added between columns with a | character. Double lines can be produced with || (see vline customization). The stroke of the vertical line can be changed by appending anything that is usually allowed as a stroke argument in square brackets, e.g., |[2pt], |[red] or |[(dash: \"dashed\")].

A column specification string may contain any number of spaces (e.g., to improve readability) — all spaces will be ignored.

If you find yourself writing highly complex column specifications, consider not using this package and resort to the parameters that the built-in tables provide. This package is intended for quick and relatively simple column specifications.

Number alignment

Choosing capital letters L, C, R, or A instead of lower-case letters activates number alignment at the decimal separator for a specific column (similar to the column type “S” of the LaTeX package siunitx). This feature is provided via the Typst package Zero. Here you can read up on the configuration of number formatting.

#let percm = $"cm"^(-1)$

#pillar.table(
  cols: "l|CCCC",
  [], [$Δ ν_0$ in #percm], [$B'_ν$ in #percm], [$B''_ν$ in #percm], [$D'_ν$ in #percm],
  table.hline(),
  [Measurement], [14525.278],   [1.41],    [1.47],    [1.5e-5],
  [Uncertainty], [2],           [0.3],     [0.3],     [4e-6],
  [Ref. [2]],    [14525,74856], [1.37316], [1.43777], [5.401e-6]
)

Non-number entries (e.g., in the header) are automatically recognized in some cases and will not be aligned. In ambiguous cases, adding a leading or trailing space tells Zero not to apply alignment to this cell, e.g., [Voltage ] instead of [Voltage].

pillar.cols()

This function produces an argument list that may contain arguments for columns, align, stroke, and column-gutter as well as instances of table.vline(). These arguments are intended to be expanded with the .. syntax into the argument list of table as shown in the examples.

pillar.table()

This is a thin wrapper that behaves just like the built-in table, except that it extracts the first positional argument if it is a string, and runs it through pillar.cols().

vline customization

In order to customize the default line setting, just use set rules on table.vline, e.g.,

#set table.vline(stroke: .7pt)

#table(..pillar.cols("c|cc"), ..)

Double lines are currently experimental and are realized through column gutters. They could also be realized through patterns, but this can produce artifacts with some renderers. As it currently is, double lines are not supported before the first and after the last column. On the other hand, with the current method, double lines are styled with set rules on table.vline which is nice and not achievable in the same way with patterns.

Examples

Double lines

The following example uses a double line for visually separating repeated table columns.

#pillar.table(
  cols: "ccc ||[.7pt] ccc",
  
  ..([\#], [$α$ in °], [$β$ in °]) * 2,
  table.hline(),
  [1], [34.3], [11.1],  [6], [34.0], [12.9],
  [2], [34.2], [11.2],  [7], [34.3], [12.8],
  [3], [34.6], [11.4],  [8], [33.9], [11.9],
  [4], [34.7], [10.3],  [9], [34.4], [11.8],
  [5], [34.3], [11.1], [10], [34.4], [11.8],
)

Further customization

This example shows the codes of the first ten printable ASCII characters, demonstrating stroke and column width customization.

#pillar.table(
  cols: "ccc|ccc|[1.8pt + blue] l[5cm]",
  
  [Dec],[Hex],[Bin],[Symbol], [HTML code], [HTML name], [Description],
  table.hline(),
  [32], [20], [00100000], [ ], [],         [SP], [Space],
  [33], [21], [00100001], [!], [!],   [!],  [Exclamation mark],
  [34], [22], [00100010], ["], ["],   ["],  [Double quotes],
  [35], [23], [00100011], [#], [#],    [\#], [Number sign],
  [36], [24], [00100100], [$], [$], [\$], [Dollar sign],
  [37], [25], [00100101], [%], [%], [%],  [Percent sign],
  [38], [26], [00100110], [&], [&],    [&],  [Ampersand],
  [39], [27], [00100111], ['], ['],   ['],  [Single quote],
  [40], [28], [00101000], [(], [&lparen;], [(],  [Opening parenthesis],
  [41], [29], [00101001], [)], [&rparen;], [)],  [Closing parenthesis],
)

Tests

This package uses typst-test for running tests.