Syntax for header *columns* in tables

[jgm]

I lack the possibility to get a *column* of `<th>` cells (respectively how
other output formats mark header cells) in a table; it's of course usually
the leftmost column which needs to be so treated, but the proposed syntax
will allow any column(s) to be designated as header column(s).

The suggested syntax is to substitute equals for dashes in the 'column
format' row of dashes.  Given the input (silly example)

Family   Kid 1  Kid 2  Kid 3  Status
=======  ------ ------ ------ =======
Duck     Huey   Dewey  Louie  Old
Simpson  Bart   Lisa   Maggie New
Griffin  Chris  Meg    Stewie Ripoff

This will make the cells of the leftmost and rightmost columns be output as
header cells.  A more typical use would be with only the leftmost column as
a header column and the top left cell empty: 

         Kid 1  Kid 2  Kid 3 
=======  ------ ------ ------
Duck     Huey   Dewey  Louie 
Simpson  Bart   Lisa   Maggie
Griffin  Chris  Meg    Stewie

Table: Cartoon families with three kids

Of course it should work just as well with the new syntax with no header *row*:

=======  ------ ------ ------
Duck     Huey   Dewey  Louie 
Simpson  Bart   Lisa   Maggie
Griffin  Chris  Meg    Stewie
=======  ------ ------ ------





Google Code Info:
Issue #: 184
Author: bpjonsson
Created On: 2009-12-11T10:56:15.000Z
Closed On: 

[healdp]

Hi - is this enhancement under active consideration? I love pandoc, but I would classify this issue as a significant bug. So much HTML code make use of tags, and at the moment pandoc essentially ignores any such tables and renders the content as linear text (converting to mediawiki). BTW, the same problem occurs if you use tags, which all our code does. I'm using Pandoc 1.8 for Windows. Thanks.

[healdp]

My previous comment had the html tags stripped out. I was referring to the thead and tbody tags, respectively. Thanks!

Hi - is this enhancement under active consideration? I love pandoc, but I would classify this issue as a significant bug. So much HTML code make use of thead tags, and at the moment pandoc essentially ignores any such tables and renders the content as linear text (converting to mediawiki). BTW, the same problem occurs if you use tbody tags, which all our code does. I'm using Pandoc 1.8 for Windows. Thanks.

[jgm]

@healdp - you seem to be talking about the HTML reader (converting from HTML). This issue is about the markdown reader (providing a syntax for header columns). If you are concerned with reading HTML, you should open another issue and provide a specific example.

[bpj]

I got this idea for how to mark any cell as
a header cell in a gridtable: replace the underline
-s of that cell with =s:

    +------------+---------+----------+---------+
    | Country    | Oz      | Belgium  | Sweden  |
    +============+=========+==========+=========+
    | First name | Jack    | Jaques   | Jakob   |
    +============+---------+----------+---------+
    | Last name  | Smith   | Fournier | Smed    |
    +============+---------+----------+---------+
    | Favorite   | LaTeX   | Markdown | HTML    |
    | markup     |         |          |         |
    +============+---------+----------+---------+
    | Language   | English | French   | Swedish |
    +============+---------+----------+---------+

but I see not even ReST supports this...

[mb21]

Closing in favour of #1024