Tables

• Complex tables with HTML
• Table captions

Kramdown (and most markdown variants) can only handle very simple tables. For these you can create the Markdown layout manually. See the chapter on markdown for guidance on formatting simple tables.

You can also use online tools to convert tables into a markdown format.

• Senseful. For instance, working from InDesign:
  • Click and drag over some cells in the InDesign table (not the header row). Then Ctrl+A to select the whole table.
  • Ctrl+C to copy, then paste into a blank spreadsheet.
  • Select all the relevant cells in your spreadsheet, and copy. The table text is now on your clipboard, with the cells separated by tabs.
  • Paste into the online Format Text as Table Input field.
  • Click ‘Create Table’. (The default settings are usually fine. Play with them only if you need to.)
  • Copy the Output and paste it into your markdown file.
• Ascii Table:
  • Paste tab-delimited table text
  • Select ‘GitHub Markdown’ for the output style
  • Copy the resulting plain-text table into your markdown.

Table formatting in markdown can differ between flavours of markdown. You may need to tweak it. For instance, Senseful starts some table borders with + where kramdown needs a |. In that case, manually change the starting + in any row with a |.

Complex tables with HTML

For complex tables – anything with merged cells, for instance – you must create an HTML table and paste that HTML (from <table> to </table>) into your markdown files. It’s easiest to use a WYSIWYG HTML editor. For instance, Dreamweaver lets us paste a table from a formatted source like Word or LibreOffice, and then clean up the HTML easily before pasting the whole <table> element into our markdown document.

Table captions

In markdown, add {:.table-caption} in the line immediately after a table caption paragraph. This applies the class table-caption to the paragraph, which CSS can style. For instance, the template’s default styles avoid a page break after the caption, before the table. (According to publishing best-practice, table captions must always appear above tables, not after them.)