Cfrgtkky

Can someone please explain if it is possible to obtain centered text or right justified text within a TeX hbox? I am attempting to utilize some code I found here in order to transpose a LaTeX table.

Here is my code for reference. Note that I'm using the booktabs and array packages.

defMidrule{midrule[heavyrulewidth]}

newcountrowc



makeatletter

defttabular{%

~

hboxbgroup

let\cr

defrulea{ifnumrowc=@ne hrule height 1.3pt fi}

defruleb{

ifnumrowc=1hrule height 0pt else%

ifnumrowc=2hrule height 1.3pt else%

ifnumrowc=6hrule height heavyrulewidth

   else hrule height lightrulewidthfififi}

valignbgroup

globalrowc@ne

rulea

hbox to 10cm{strut~~hfill##hfill}%

ruleb

&&%

globaladvancerowc@ne

hbox to 10cm{strut~~hfill##hfill}%

ruleb

cr}

defendttabular{%

crcregroupegroup}

I don't like the effect of "hbox to 1cm", though, as it hardcodes the width of the columns of my table. I've tried replacing with "hbox spread 1cm" or just "hbox", but in both cases the text in the columns is left justified. Is there any way to obtain center or right justified text without fixed-width columns?

Thanks in advance!

EDIT:

OK, here is a minimal working example:

documentclass{article}



usepackage{booktabs,array}



defMidrule{midrule[heavyrulewidth]}

newcountrowc



makeatletter

defttabular{%

~

hboxbgroup

let\cr

defrulea{ifnumrowc=@ne hrule height 1.3pt fi}

defruleb{

ifnumrowc=1hrule height 0pt else%

ifnumrowc=2hrule height 1.3pt else%

ifnumrowc=6hrule height heavyrulewidth

   else hrule height lightrulewidthfififi}

valignbgroup

globalrowc@ne

rulea

hbox{strut~~hfill##hfill}%

ruleb

&&%

globaladvancerowc@ne

hbox{strut~~hfill##hfill}%

ruleb

cr}

defendttabular{%

crcregroupegroup}



begin{document}



begin{ttabular}

                    &   Item                &   Very very very very very long item  & Short item\

Price at Original   &   Location ($)       &   $3.95                                  & $9.95\

Price at New        &   Location ($)       &   $3.99                                  & $10.63 \

end{ttabular}



end{document}

This produces the following:

I believe the comments are correct and that is not a problem within my hbox's but rather that the hbox's themselves are sized appropriately and then being left aligned within each column. However, I'd still like to know how to generate a transposed table and have the columns of the final result be either centered or right-justified.

For anyone interested, the reason I want to do this is I'm using R markdown to generate the table. The entries of each column are given by the elements of an array, and the array's size may change from one generation of the table to another. So my R markdown code looks like this:

begin{ttabular}

                    &   Item                &   Sexpr{paste(items, collapse=" & ")} \

Price at Original   &   Location ($)       &   Sexpr{paste(site1price, collapse=" & ")} \

Price at New        &   Location ($)       &   Sexpr{paste(site2price, collapse=" & ")} \

end{ttabular}

In the above, item, site1price, and site2price are R arrays.

Any help is appreciated!

Center, left and right aligned "xxx":

documentclass{article}

begin{document}

hbox to 5cm{hfil xxx hfil}par

hbox to 5cm{hfil xxx}par

hbox to 5cm{xxx hfil}par

end{document}

But better:

documentclass{article}

begin{document}

makebox[5cm][c]{x x x}par

makebox[5cm][r]{x x x}par

makebox[5cm][l]{x x x}par

makebox[5cm][s]{x x x}par

end{document}

I've accepted the answer above because it technically answered the question about alignment within an hbox, although it didn't really help me accomplish what I wanted to do.

For anyone interested, I did find a rather ugly work around for my problem. Instead of using valign to build my transposed table from the arrays, I used minipages. This, of course, only worked because I knew the number of columns that I wanted and had a relatively good guess as to the approximate widths I wanted those columns to be. Here is the code I ended up with:

begin{minipage}{.5textwidth}

centering

hrule height 1.3pt

strut ~\

strut Item\

hrule height 1.3pt

strut Sexpr{paste(items, collapse="\\strut \\\\ \\hrule ")}strut

hrule height 1.3pt

end{minipage}%

begin{minipage}{.2textwidth}

centering

hrule height 1.3pt

struthfill Price at Original\

struthfill Location ($)\

hrule height 1.3pt

strut hfill Sexpr{paste(site1price, collapse="\\strut \\\\ \\hrule \\hfill")}strut

hrule height 1.3pt

end{minipage}%

begin{minipage}{.2textwidth}

centering

hrule height 1.3pt

struthfill Price at New\

struthfill Location ($)\

hrule height 1.3pt

strut hfill Sexpr{paste(site2price, collapse="\\strut \\\\ \\hrule \\hfill")}strut

hrule height 1.3pt

end{minipage}

This produces something like this: