Convert tables in rst to LaTeX - latex

Question

I have some .rst files and I convert them to .tex file using standard sphinx converter.
In some .rst I have tables with special width like:
.. list-table::
:widths: 50 50
The resulting .tex always contains tables like:
\begin{tabulary}{\textwidth}{|L|L|}
So, the column width is lost.
How can I preserve column width when converting rst to latex?
I used comma separator too,
.. list-table::
:widths: 50 , 50
:header-rows: 1
* - SETTING
- DESCRIPTION
* - Enable
- Enables or disables internal tracing.
* - Verbose
- Enables or disables extended internal tracing.
but it doesn't work.. maybe I used a bad converter? What converter do you recommend?

Answer 1

actually the command
.. tabularcolumns:: |p{4.5cm}|p{8.5cm}|
is needed just before .. list-table::
https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/directives.html#directive-tabularcolumns

Answer 2

try:
:widths: 50, 50
with a comma separator.
The output also depends on how your table is written in rst.
I assumed that you were using the standard rst table syntax, not making tables from bulleted lists (as is possible). For more help, try http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html#tables
Also, if the 50, 50 is the column width, your latex code should look like this:
\begin{tabulary}{ 1\textwidth}{ | p{0.5} | p{0.5} | }
and:
\begin{tabulary}{total width of table}{| column width| column width|}

Answer 3

The docutils rst2latex writer has some issues with tables: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/dev/todo.html#tables , so maybe your problem is related to that? I think the Sphinx writer is based on rst2latex and might thus have the same issues.

Answer 4

I can confirm that this:
.. list-table::
:widths: 10 40 50
* - Module
- Link
- Description
Works with rst2latex
\setlength{\DUtablewidth}{\linewidth}
\begin{longtable*}[c]{|p{0.104\DUtablewidth}|p{0.375\DUtablewidth}|p{0.465\DUtablewidth}|}
\hline
Module
&
Link
&
Description
\\
\hline
But with sphinx, I get what the OP put. So not an rst2latex issue I would gather.
The "Auto" width stuff the docs talk about is also not very functional for me, links tend to bleed over.

Answer 5

Since I have a huge documentation, I tried to fix the latex generation. Also, I consider Latex notation in rst files a disadvantage, because it's inconsistent and requires editors to partly learn a touchy markup language.
I replaced LaTeXTranslator.depart_table with my own version. I copied the original depart_table and added this code (shortened):
def my_depart_table (self, node):
totalColwidth = 0
givenColwidth = []
hasColwidth = False
for tgroup in node:
for tableColspec in tgroup:
try:
if tableColspec.has_key('colwidth'):
totalColwidth += tableColspec['colwidth']
givenColwidth.append(tableColspec['colwidth'])
hasColwidth = True
except:
print "colspec missing. \n"
# original code
if hasColwidth:
colspec = ""
for thisColwidth in givenColwidth:
colspec += ('>{\RaggedRight}p{%.3f\\linewidth}' % (0.95 * thisColwidth / totalColwidth))
#print "using widths: %.3f %s %s" % ((0.95 * thisColwidth / totalColwidth), thisColwidth, totalColwidth)
self.body.append('{' + colspec + '}\n')
# more original code
LaTeXTranslator.depart_table = my_depart_table
Im neither fluent in Python nor Sphinx, so use at own risk. I hope you get the idea or can even give advice.
If you use Python < 3.0 and want to remove the factor 0.95 completely, remember to either cast one of the integers to float or import division from __ future __.