Tables

At this point I think you are familiar with the paragraph concept, so it will not surprise you that even tables are paragraphs. And quickly you'll ask: what's the special prefix?

Well, the special prefix for table paragraphs is a line describing the string that is used to delimit columns. This is done by starting with @, followed by the delimiter string.

The most intuitive delimiter string is "|". So here's an example of a table using this delimiter:

   @|
   given name | name    | playing
   Peter      | Paul    | Guitar
   Paul       | Newby
   Mary Ann   | Shuttle | Chess

That's intuitive and suggested for all cases without | in the field entries, but one could use another (and longer) string as well:

   @OOPS
   given name OOPS name    OOPS playing
   Peter      OOPS Paul    OOPS Guitar
   Paul       OOPS Newby
   Mary Ann   OOPS Shuttle OOPS Chess

Please have a look at the whitespaces in the table fields - in order to make the source as readable as possible, you can add as many as you want.

OK. Another point is that the rows in this example have different numbers of columns. Will this cause a problem? No - PerlPoint will add columns automatically, according to the headline row. This is the very first row in the table.