Graphics, Figures & Tables ⇒ Make heading row of table bold

[Steztric]

Hi everybody,

This must seem like a very simple question, but I want to make the heading row of a table bold. Unfortunately I can't find any tutorials anywhere that tells me how to do this? I can make an entire column bold by going

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\begin{tabular}{>{\bfseries}l}

But this code doesn't help for rows...

Thanks,

Steve

[gmedina]

Hi,

you could use \textbf for each entry:

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\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{ccc}\hline
  \textbf{First column} & \textbf{Second column} & \textbf{Third column}\\ \hline
  text1a & text2a & text3a\\
  text1b & text2b & text3b 
\end{tabular}

\end{document} 

[Steztric]

Thanks, that's true. It is an awkward hack though. Some tables I have are rotated and have 15 columns. This makes for a lot of \textbf'ing (not that text would be inclined to do so...). Surely there is a more elegant way of making an entire row bold?

[Steztric]

Hi guys.

I managed to solve the problem. I found some documentation on the matter. It requires a couple of new definitions and some tokens in the table column definitions to get it done, but it's possible;

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\newcolumntype{+}{>{\global\let\currentrowstyle\relax}}
\newcolumntype{^}{>{\currentrowstyle}}
\newcommand{\rowstyle}[1]{\gdef\currentrowstyle{#1}%
#1\ignorespaces
}

\begin{table}[htb]
\centering
\begin{tabular}{+l^l^l}
\rowstyle{\bfseries}%
Column & Text & Description\\
\hline
1      & Itn  & Iteration number\\
2      & AveC & Average cost across all genomes in population\\
3      & AveF & Average fitness of all genomes\\
4      & MinC & The lowest cost from any genome (ignoring overfill)\\
5      & MinF & The fittest gene in the current population\\
6      & BGP  & Best Genome Position in population\\
\end{tabular}
\caption{Statistics File Columns Description}
\label{tab:statsform}
\end{table}

So the short&simple of it is, copy the \newcolumntype commands into your code. Wherever you need to format an entire row, you need to add the + and ^ tokens to your row definitions and then include the \rowstyle to choose how you want the row to be formatted.

Good luck,

Steve

[thuldai]

That seems messy indeed. And with me it doesn't work, I'm getting:

! Undefined control sequence.
l.516 \newcolumntype
{^}{>{\currentrowstyle}}

I tried putting those commands before my \begin{document} and after - both times with the same error (except for the line number). And as I don't really understand what's going on, I'm clueless as to try what next.

Using pdflatex, maybe that has sth to do with it?

Thanks for any hints.

Might just do the \textbf{} crutch, although it IS embarrassingly inelegant.

EDIT:
Also wanted to point you that I'm trying to use this in a rotated table (sidewaystable environment).

And one more question:
Could you be a bit more specific on where to put those +'s and ^'s? In particular I have a tabular like this:
\begin{tabular}{l|rrr|rrr|rrr|rrr|}
And I'm clueless as to where (for example in relation to the |'s) to put them and how many.

Ah, guess that's all a bit too advanced to me...

[phi]

That seems messy indeed.

Why? It's probably as elegant as you can get with simple LaTeX.

And with me it doesn't work

You need to include the array package

[thuldai]

Thanks that helped. For other noobs (like me), here some filling-in of blanks:

Before your \begin{document}, put this (or something like it):

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\usepackage{array}
\newcolumntype{+}{>{\global\let\currentrowstyle\relax}}
\newcolumntype{^}{>{\currentrowstyle}}
\newcommand{\rowstyle}[1]{\gdef\currentrowstyle{#1}%
#1\ignorespaces
}

Then if you had something like this:

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\begin{tabular}{l|rrr|rrr|rrr|rrr|}

you have to turn it into this

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\begin{tabular}{+l|^r^r^r|^r^r^r|^r^r^r|^r^r^r|}

i.e. the ^'s are always AFTER a potential vertical line.

Then it worked smoothly, even with a rotated table.

Enjoy!

And thanks for the help.