An empty multicolumn cell causes extra row height in PDF output

[jfbu]

Procedure to reproduce the problem

source:

+----+----+----+----+
| c1 | c2 | c3 | c4 |
+----+----+----+----+
| d1 | d2 |         |
+----+----+---------+

+----+----+----+----+
| c1 | c2 | c3 | c4 |
+----+----+----+----+
| d1 | d2 | d34     |
+----+----+---------+

Error logs / results

pdf output:

Notice extra row height in first table

Expected results

No extra row height in first table

Environment info

• OS: Mac
• Python version: 3.5.4 (CPython)
• Docutils version: 0.14
• Sphinx version: 1.6.3 and master

Anecdote: I took over the table from a docutils bug report. With Sphinx latex writer there isn't the problem of Docutils rst2latex, but still the produced LaTeX does not behave completely nicely as demonstrated by image above.

The latex file contains

&\sphinxstartmulticolumn{2}%
\begin{varwidth}[t]{\sphinxcolwidth{2}{4}}
\par
\vskip-\baselineskip\strut\end{varwidth}%
\sphinxstopmulticolumn

if it was (notice extra \strut)

&\sphinxstartmulticolumn{2}%
\begin{varwidth}[t]{\sphinxcolwidth{2}{4}}
\strut\par
\vskip-\baselineskip\strut\end{varwidth}%
\sphinxstopmulticolumn

this would fix the issue. Needs some thinking over, though.

[jfbu]

Fixed at f453fe7 (and 8542e29 for line too long flake8 violation).