Tables with combined cells

Offline MediaWiki Code Editor

Tables with Combined Cells

An assistant to build and insert wikicode for tables with merged cells.

Tables with combined cells are those tables where two or more contiguous cells are merged, reducing the number of cells that would occur in regular tables. Tables of this type are not frequent in Wikipedia. But are sometimes necessary to display some kind of information.

This assistant for Tables with combined cells helps you to create tables with up to five rows and five columns, where you can merge adjacent cells in whatever the way you need.

Due to the complexity of the sintax and the rarity of these tables, the assistant do not produce tables with a higher number of rows or columns. But if you pay attention to the wikicode, you might manually add more cells to a table generated with this assistant.

The default features of the tables you can produce with this assistant are the following:

· Table title in bold type

· The size of the cells is auto-adjusted to the content.

· Column headings and row headings centered and in bold type.

· Cells with thin borders

· Cell content centered vertically

· Cell backgrounds in a light gray shades

· Up to 5 columns

· Up to 5 rows

Table alignment

The centered position is particularly convenient for wide tables occupying most of the page width. The alignment to one side is only convenient in the case of narrow (and long) tables, to let the surrounding text to flow through the opposite side avoiding an excess of blank space in the page.

Table title

Table title is centered by default, but you can optionally align the title to the left.

Heading options

· No headings at all - Choose this option if you want to have all the cells with the same format. Cell content is left aligned by default. Tables with no headings have a background with only one shade of gray. This option is not available in the Assistant for regular tables.

· Column headings only - When you choose this option the first row is reserved for column headings, where the text will be centered and in bold type, with a darker shade of gray in the background.

· Column and row headings - When you choose this option the first row is reserved for column headings, while the first column is reserved for row headings. All headings have centered text and bold type by default, and have a darker shade of gray in the background.

Table cells

The visual assistant is placed in the left part of the form. Enter data and merge cells from left to right and from up to down. Do not worry if after entering all data you can not visualize the entire content of all cells at the same time. The size of the cells will be automatically adjusted to the cell content.

Cell content is aligned to the left by default. But If you want to show the text centered, you should activate the option Center cell content. In the case you need to align to the right the cell content, first choose Center cell content and after generating the code, change manually the code value text-align:center to text-align:right

Cell content is centered vertically by default.

Do not leave cells blank, use   instead. When you use this string inside an empty cell, it will be seen blank in the rendered page. If you leave any cell blank, the assistant will not work correctly and you will not achieved the desired results.

How to use this assistant

Do the following paths:

1. Enter table title and indicate if it should be aligned to the left.

2. Enter the text of the first cell (C1F1) which is in the left top corner of the table. When necessary merge this cell with one of the contiguous cells using the panel of buttons at the right side of the form.

3. Do the same operation with the next cell (from left to right). When you finish a row continue with the next until the table is completed. Merge the cells the way you want, but do not left empty cells. Left empty only those cells which will not belong to the table.

You may realize that there is a great number of possible cell combinations merging cells of a 5 x 5 table. The following is an example of one of the complex tables you can build with the help of this assistant:

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

4. This example was based on a table of five columns and four rows, merging cells

to obtain a total of eleven cells with different sizes.

After entering all data, click on the command button <Generate code> to generate the code that will appear in the wikicode window. Then click on the command button <Insert table> to insert the table in the Edit window.

How to combine contiguos cells?

Contiguous cells are merged with the aid of the <Cell merger>. The <Cell merger> is a panel of buttons cross-arranged at the right side of the panel of cells.

In the following example you want to merge the cell A with the cell B which is in the same row. Left empty the cell B and place the cursor in the cell A and click on the button with the right arrow (è) in the <Cell merger>

A

B

C

This will be the result:

A+B

C

A + B were merged

If you click again it will produce the following result:

A+B+C

A+B+C were combined

Every click on the button with the right arrow will merge another cell to the combination.

If you want to undo the last combination, click on the button with the left arrow (ç). Every click releases a cell of the combination.

You can also combine cells of different rows if those cells belong to the same column. In this example you can merge cells A and B if you place the cursor in the cell A and click on the button with the down arrow (↓):

A

B

To undo this action click on the button with the arrow up.

You can also make more complex combinations involving cells of different rows and columns. This is an example of how to combine the four cells A, B, C and D: Place the cursor in the cell A and make a click on the button with the right arrow and another click on the button with the down arrow. Only two clicks are necessary to merge these four cells:

A

B

C

D

Button <Start>

The command button <Start> in the center of the panel has the function to restart the assistant. Clicking on that button you can undo all cell combinations and erase the content of all cells.

Generate code and insert table

When you had entered the table data, click on the command button <Generate code> and the wikicode will appear in the code window. Then click on the command button <Insert table> to close the assistant and insert the table code into the Edit window.

The generated code will not be saved if you close the assistant before inserting the code in the Edit window (the assistant for tables with regular cells behaves differently).

Error inserting a table

If you forgot to select the point of insertion in the Edit window, an error message will make you note the omission. When this happens, this assistant is temporarily hidden until you place the cursor at the point of insertion and reopen the assistant. So you do not need to enter table data again. But if instead, you close the Edit window, then the table data will be lost (the assistant for tables with regular cells behaves differently).

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