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Tables

For tables longer than a page you can use the longtable package.

This package defines a longtable environment that is a kind of amalgamation of table and tabular. It has approximately the same syntax as the tabular environment, but it adds some features of table, like captions. Longtables will be automatically split when they don't fit on the page. And they will be entered in the list of tables when a caption is given. They will not float, however, and cannot be used inside a float environment. This could mean that another table environment, which was defined before the longtable, will float past it, and therefore the numbers may get out of order. Another problem could be that the longtable starts rather far down the page, which isn't a pleasant sight. If you want the longtable to start at the top of the page, the best thing to do is to include it in an \afterpage command (using the afterpage package). As a longtable is by definition large, it is best to put it in a separate file, and \input it in the \afterpage command: afterpage

\afterpage{\input{mytable}}
\afterpage{\clearpage\input{mytable}}
The last form has the additional advantage that most of the outstanding floats will be printed first.



Piet van Oostrum
Thu Feb 27 13:38:20 MET 1997