Re: multitable widths problem

[Gavin Smith]

On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 08:20:26PM +0000, Gavin Smith wrote:
> > In the table below, it is expected that column fractions with
> > identical values cause table columns with the same width.  However,
> > this is not true, as the image shows.

> I think it's due to the space between columns being included in the width
> of each column.

One possible solution could be to calculate the 20%, 30% etc. of a
smaller page width and then to add the spaces in between columns after.
This would change the output slightly for existing documents but I agree
it is confusing to have a first column to be wider than a later column
when they are specified has having exactly the same width.

For example, with @columnfractions 0.3 0.7 the first column has 30% and no
space, and the second column has 70% but has a space included at the left
side of the column, so the content takes up slightly less than 70%.  If that
were changed, then the first column would become slightly narrower, and the
content of the second column slightly wider.

Without any changes to texinfo.tex, you could use prototypes instead like

@multitable {abcmno abcmno abcmno} {abcmno abcmno} {abcmno abcmno abcmno} 
{abcmno abcmno}
@item
@code{abcde fghijklmnopqrstuvw}
@tab
foobar
@tab
@code{abcde fghijklmnopqrstuvw}
@tab
foobar
@end multitable

as there the width is not included in the width of the column, although this
is obviously worse to put in your file.