A survey for tabularray users

[lvjr]

Welcome to tabularray Discussions! Here is a survey for you:

1. How did you know of tabularray package?
2. Which TeX distribution (TeX Live, MiKTeX, etc) and which version do you use?
3. Which parts of the manual of tabularray package do you think need to be improved?

Please fill out the survey in your comment. Thank you!

[leomayer]

1. From your reply on tex.stackexchange
2. texlive with OpenSusue ==> your package is NOT yet provided by the packaging structure - what a pity.
3. Already responded in another ticket.

[cdacl]

1. From your reply on tex.stackexchange.
2. texlive in Win10, and mactex in macos.
3. The same as leomayer.

[syvshc]

1. from QQ group user Nan Geng
2. TeXLive2021 on win10 and ArchLinux
3. prefect I think

[bluebear94]

1. From tex.stackexchange
2. TeX Live 2021 (on Manjaro Linux)
3. Point out some caveats when migrating from another table package; maybe a troubleshooting section

[mafsi]

1. From your reply on tex.stackexchange.com
2. MikTeX on Win 10
3. The manual is written for those who already know how to use table. This is not my case. I jumped directly to tabularray being a novice in LaTeX. Tabularray is a great package and deserve an extended manual for novices.
   • Please improve section 1.6 Column Types.
   • Also, this part is not covered in manual.
     Thank you for the package!

[md-al-imran-abir]

1. Can't exactly remember. Most probably through an answer in the TeX SE.
2. MikTeX 22.3
3. Much friendlier for novices compared to many other documentations.

[JeT76-ESCP]

1. Zarko on TeX.SE
2. MikTeX
3. You deserve the same webpage for your examples :)

[registor]

1. from easybook class source codes
2. TeXLive2022 on Ubuntu20.04
3. prefect I think

[mauriziopassariello]

1. From stackexchange
2. TexLive 2022
3. The documentation assumes you know how to put together the table. It is not friendly for novices. A quick guide with examples or a cheat sheet may be useful

[ysalmon]

1. By chance while browsing things about LaTeX3.
2. TexLive2022 under Linux.
3. What @mafsi and @mauriziopassariello said. To let tabularray replace the other packages and the base array (which imo it should because it is much better), a documentation is needed that does not rely on knowledge of those. Also, limitations of the package (currently, inability to have & or % in the table, inter alia) should be laid out in the doc.

[xfz329]

1recommended from a latext project.
2 latex 2023.
3 how to use the theme and the template. #394

[abbas-shams]

1. When searching for a solution to my problem of merging multiple rows and columns simultaneously.
2. TeXlive 2023 under both Windows and Linux
3. Unfortunately, there is not any step-by-step guideline for tabularray anywhere; so, in addition to the package documentation (which is not, in my opinion, a manual), the developers should provide a step-by-step guideline for those starting to learn LaTeX. My question is, why a user should learn multiple packages with the same aim? The documentation for tabularray has been provided based on having a basic knowledge of typesetting tables with macros other than what tabularray has provided. It's a waste of time. Users should be able to jump into tabularray without knowing basic information about typesetting tables by other means.

Anyhow, I should thank from developers of tabularray for their efforts and for developing such a powerful package.

Also, I have a suggestion. There is longtblr environment for tables whose height exceeds the height of the page. Some tables are wide (and maybe simultaneously tall). For such tables, another environment (called widetable) may be produced to spread columns of tables on multiple pages. An example of such wide tables can be found in the standard "ASME BPVC Section II-Materials-Part D-Properties". In this document, table columns have been spread over four pages.

[celdorwow]

Welcome to tabularray Discussions! Here is a survey for you:

1. I came across tabularray when reading answers on TeX.SE.
2. Current, at the time of writing, TeX Live 2023.
3. IMO the part related to longtblr and talltblr are particularly confusing. It is not simple and straightforward to figure out what one should do to customise these environments. I understand the idea is to define custom styles components and then utilise such "elements" in different styles. A number of styles can utilise the same style component and the one style can have a number of components. This adds flexibility to define multiple styles without necessarily repeating the code etc. This is great idea. It is also understandable it adds the complexity. But again it is not well explained. I think examples based on custom styles would help a lot. Currently, the reference manual provides snippets based on the default style. Because of the complexity, this is rather difficult to figure out where the style components should be defined, where they should be used and how to put everything together in a table. I still don't know a clear distinction between UseTblrTemplate or \ExpTblrTemplate, while one can figure out the difference between \DefTblrTemplate, \SetTblrTemplate. I think in general the manual is missing step by step examples, at least for this particular section!