Stacking tables with the geometry package included

Question

I am new to LaTeX. I am trying to stack tables one on top of another but I seem to be having a problem doing that while including the geometry package. I am doing this in order to simulate very complex table structures that would otherwise be prohibitive using standard table definitions. Here are some of my requirements:

• The tables widths must be specified in cm.
• The tables must be arranged vertically and left aligned with each other.
• The tables must not have any gaps between them.
• The default page margins must go away.
• The tables must be tabularx objects in order to take advantage of its features.

Here is the code I am using for testing:

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in, paperwidth=8.5in, paperheight=11in]{geometry}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{document}
    \noindent
    \begin{tabularx}{13.25cm}{|l|}
        \hline {Test One}  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}
    \begin{tabularx}{13.25cm}{|l|}
        \hline {Test Two}  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}
    \begin{tabularx}{13.25cm}{|l|}
        \hline {Test Three}  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}
\end{document}

This code will arrange the tables in some kind of two column array. When the geometry line is removed the tables will be arranged correctly, but I need this line in order to instruct LaTeX to give me control of the page margins.

In both cases there seems to be a 1 point gap between the tables which should not be there.

Any help is appreciated.

Answer 1

It is hard to know what the intention of the posted code is, but it is setting a paragraph composed entirely of tables, thus almost no flexibility, just a single word space per line.

Adding \raggedrightafter \begin{document} gives TeX a chance to line things up, but with the specified page size there is only room for one table per line so they all stack vertically. If the page size were wider or the tables narrower you would get more per line.

---

In the following I use X columns in the tabularx I removed the { } group around the table cell as they do not do anything. I set the table width to half the text width so that you get a two column layout and I removed the word space between each table, replacing it by a penalty to allow line breaking.

---

\documentclass[letterpaper]{article}
\usepackage[margin=1in, paperwidth=8.5in, paperheight=11in]{geometry}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\begin{document}
\raggedright
\offinterlineskip
    \noindent
    \begin{tabularx}{.5\textwidth}{|X|}
        \hline Test One  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}\linebreak[0]%
    \begin{tabularx}{.5\textwidth}{|X|}
        \hline Test Two  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}\linebreak[0]%
    \begin{tabularx}{.5\textwidth}{|X|}
        \hline Test Three  \\ \hline
    \end{tabularx}%
\end{document}