## Making better looking tables with \ctable

Submitted by dylan on Tue, 2007-12-18 00:42.

Premise:
The standard Latex table environment can be difficult to extend, especially when one wants to use modern constructs such as table foot notes, etc. The ctable package is a convenient approach to solving this problem. A complete worked example of a table typset using the \ctable command is presented below. Note that \ctable is a command, and therefore does not allow blank newline characters. One way to maintain readability is to trick Latex by adding a comment character to all blank lines. Link to PDF manual for ctable.

Example of table produced with ctable

Code used to produce the example above. This example was produced with TexLive.

```%
% start the table: note that we cannot have extra newline characters in the ctable defs
\ctable[
cap     = {logistic regression parameters},
%
caption = {Logistic regression model (M3) parameters. Coefficients, standard error, z-values, and p-values are included for each term used in the model. A separate slope and intercept term was fit to each geologic class.},
%
label   = {aspect_effect:table:glm_model_properties},
%
%
]{lccc}{
%
\tnote[\$\ast\$]{Marginal p-values are used to determine whether each term is significantly different than 0.}
%
}{ \FL
%
Model Term & Value & Std. Error & Marginal p-values\tmark[\$\ast\$]      \ML
%
Intercept & & &  \\  \cmidrule(r){1-1}
%
\;\;  andesite         &          1.146e+01   &   6.920e+00     &   0.09781  \\
\;\;  clastic\_volcanic   &        3.471e+00   &   2.234e+00    &       0.12024  \\
\;\;  coarse\_sedimentary  &       4.446e+00   &   2.390e+00    &    0.06285  \\
\;\;  felsic\_intrusive     &      5.384e+00   &   2.714e+00    &      0.04725  \\
\;\;  fine\_sedimentary   &        8.527e+00   &   4.013e+00      &   0.03361  \\
\;\;  rhyolite       &            1.075e+01   &   4.071e+00    &      0.00828 \\
\;\;  tuff              &         1.657e+01   &   9.116e+03    &      0.99855   \\
%
%
\\
Slope & & & \\   \cmidrule(r){1-1}
%
\;\;  andesite       &      -1.356e-03   &   8.448e-04     &  0.10858  \\
\;\;  clastic\_volcanic    &  -3.588e-04   &   2.851e-04     &   0.20825  \\
\;\;  coarse\_sedimentary  &  -8.165e-04   &   3.336e-04   &   0.01438  \\
\;\;  felsic\_intrusive    &   -6.352e-04    &  3.503e-04    &     0.06977  \\
\;\;  fine\_sedimentary    &   -1.122e-03   &   5.139e-04   &    0.02897  \\
\;\;  rhyolite       &       -1.361e-03  &    4.873e-04   &   0.00522  \\
\;\;  tuff         &         6.155e-14   &   1.200e+00   &   1.00000
%
%
\LL}
```
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