[texhax] tabular and page breaks

[Axel E. Retif]

On Nov 20, 2006, at 14:30 , George Georgalis wrote:

> I have a basic tabular environment,
>
> \begin{tabular*}{\textwidth}{lp{4.75in}@{\extracolsep{\fill}}}
>
> this makes two columns, first a word list, second
> for definitions.  However it is about 110% of page
> length---so that's a problem.
>
> I'm starting to try tabbing, however that yields
>
> |-----------------------textwidth-----------------------|
> word a		abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd  
> abcd
>
>
> when I really need the tabular, with paragraph box, rendering
>
> |-----------------------textwidth-----------------------|
> word a		abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
> 		abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd

The following works ``out of the box'' (taken from "LaTeX Tutorials  
---A Primer", by the Indian TeX Users Group, chapter VII: http:// 
sarovar.org/projects/ltxprimer/ ):

Best,

Axel

-------
\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
   \begin{center}
     \begin{tabular}{lp{.8\linewidth}}
       Planet  & Features\\[5pt]
       Mercury & Lunar like crust, crustal faulting, small magnetic
                 fields.\\
      Venus   & Shrouded in clouds, undulating surface with highlands,
                  plains, lowlands and craters.\\
       Earth   & Ocens of water filling lowlands between continents,
                 unique in supporting life, magnetic field.\\
       Mars    & Cratered uplands, lowland plains, volcanic regions.\\
       Jupiter & Covered by clouds, dark ring of dust, magnetic field.\\
       Saturn  & Several cloud layers, magnetic field, thousands
                 of rings.\\
       Uranus  & Layers of cloud and mist, magentic field, some rings.\\
       Neptune & Unable to detect from earth.\\
       Pluto   & Unable to detect from earth
     \end{tabular}
   \end{center}
\end{document}