A.5.3 Translator functions ¶

Orgtbl mode has built-in translator functions: orgtbl-to-csv (comma-separated values), orgtbl-to-tsv (TAB-separated values), orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-html, orgtbl-to-texinfo, orgtbl-to-unicode and orgtbl-to-orgtbl. They use the generic translator, orgtbl-to-generic, which delegates translations to various export backends.

Properties passed to the function through the ‘ORGTBL SEND’ line take precedence over properties defined inside the function. For example, this overrides the default LaTeX line endings, \\, with \\[2mm]:

#+ORGTBL: SEND test orgtbl-to-latex :lend " \\\\[2mm]"

For a new language translator, define a converter function. It can be a generic function, such as shown in this example. It marks a beginning and ending of a table with ‘!BTBL!’ and ‘!ETBL!’; a beginning and ending of lines with ‘!BL!’ and ‘!EL!’; and uses a TAB for a field separator:

(defun orgtbl-to-language (table params)
  "Convert the orgtbl-mode TABLE to language."
  (orgtbl-to-generic
   table
   (org-combine-plists
    '(:tstart "!BTBL!" :tend "!ETBL!" :lstart "!BL!" :lend "!EL!" :sep "\t")
    params)))

The documentation for the orgtbl-to-generic function shows a complete list of parameters, each of which can be passed through to orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-texinfo, and any other function using that generic function.

For complicated translations the generic translator function could be replaced by a custom translator function. Such a custom function must take two arguments and return a single string containing the formatted table. The first argument is the table whose lines are a list of fields or the symbol hline. The second argument is the property list consisting of parameters specified in the ‘#+ORGTBL: SEND’ line. Please share your translator functions by posting them to the Org users mailing list, at mailto:emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.