Wrap Text in Long Table - Improvement ideas

Question

I've got a very long table top create with, at times, lots of text to wrap around within it. I'd rather not use a landscape orientation.

So I created the following test, with the ltxtable package.

The core code is:

documentclass[a4paper,oneside,centered,noparindent,noparskip]{bookest}

%usepackage{showframe}
usepackage{booktabs}
usepackage{multirow}
usepackage{ltxtable}
usepackage{threeparttable}
usepackage{textcomp}

begin{document}

LTXtable{textwidth}{t3.tex}

end{document}

While the t3.tex file longtable code is:

begin{longtable}{lp{4.5cm}lp{6.5cm}} toprule  
% header ------------------------
textnumero& Name & Title & Dates & Events  midrule
endhead
1& King Soandso III & 2234 -- to date &  This is some text 
2& King Soandso III & 2234 -- 3456 & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively
3& King Soandso III & 234 -- 134 (?)& This is some text 
4& Queen Soandso III  & 15thc -- 16thc (?) & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively
5& King Soandso III ``The Radiant Light of the Sun over the Water of the Old Spring'' & 15thc -- 16thc (?) &  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
6&&&  This is some text 
--&multicolumn{3}{p{14.5cm}}{textit{And what if there was a lot of text here that needed to be wrapped properly and elegantly to let the text breathe.}} 
7&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
8&&&  This is some text 
9&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
10&&&  This is some text  bottomrule
caption{Kings & Queens.}
end{longtable}

The result is this:

Any suggestion on how I may improve it?

For instance, why is the caption appearing so close to the bottom of the table? It's not like that with "regular" tables.

And the whole thing feels ... "ugly" and awkward would be the terms.

Thanks.

David Carlisle · Accepted Answer

It's easier, if you need spanning p columns, to use p everywhere as then you know the column width to span. I aligned the -- in the dates and moved the caption to the top.

documentclass[oneside,centered,noparindent,noparskip]{bookest}

%usepackage{showframe}
usepackage{booktabs}
usepackage{multirow}
usepackage{longtable}
usepackage{threeparttable}
usepackage{textcomp}
usepackage{array}

begin{document}

begin{longtable}{
@{}
>{raggedright}p{.5cm}
p{4.5cm}
>{raggedleft}p{1.5cm}@{}
>{raggedright}p{2cm}
p{6.5cm}
@{}}
% header ------------------------
caption{Kings & Queens.}
 toprule  
multicolumn{1}{c}{textnumero}&
multicolumn{1}{c}{Name & Title}&
multicolumn{2}{c}{Dates}&
multicolumn{1}{c}{Events} midrule
endfirsthead
caption[]{Kings & Queens.}
 toprule  
multicolumn{1}{c}{textnumero}&
multicolumn{1}{c}{Name & Title}&
multicolumn{2}{c}{Dates}&
multicolumn{1}{c}{Events} midrule
endhead
1& King Soandso III & 2234 &-- to date &  This is some text 
2& King Soandso III & 2234 &-- 3456 & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively
3& King Soandso III & 234 &-- 134 (?)& This is some text 
4& Queen Soandso III  & 15thc &-- 16thc (?) & This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively
5& King Soandso III ``The Radiant Light of the Sun over the Water of the Old Spring'' & 15thc &-- 16thc (?) &  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
6&&&&  This is some text dotfill
--&multicolumn{4}{p{dimexpr14.5cm+4tabcolsep}@{}}{%
textit{And what if there was a lot of text here that needed to be wrapped properly and elegantly to let the text breathe.}} 
7&&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
8&&&&  This is some text 
9&&&&  This is a lot of text that needs to be wrapped effectively 
10&&&&  This is some text  bottomrule
end{longtable}

end{document}

Wrap Text in Long Table - Improvement ideas

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