tabular can't vertically align the cell to the top

Question

I have the following code:

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|p{1cm}|m{1cm} | @{}m{0pt}@{}}
    \hline
        1-1 & 1-2&\\[1cm]
        \hline
        2-1 & 2-2 &\\[1cm]
    \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Had to use a hack to make the last column align middle:

Vertical alignment in table: m-column, row size - problem in last column

Wikipedia says:

1. p{'width'} --- paragraph column with text vertically aligned at the top

2. m{'width'} --- pragraph column with text vertically aligned in the middle (requires array package)

So I inspected the 1-st column to be top aligned, and the 2-nd to be middle aligned. But instead, both columns are middle aligned:

How to make the 1-st column cells top aligned?

Answer 1

Not sure if this is what you want? I seem to recall that David Carlisle once said that the alignment parameters apply to the alignment with respect to other matter in that cell, not, as you were hoping, with respect to matter in adjacent cells.

What I did here is add buffer space above and below each data entry.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array}
\usepackage{verbatimbox}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|m{1cm}|m{1cm} | @{}m{0pt}@{}}
    \hline
        \addvbuffer[0.0cm 0.9cm]{1-1} & \addvbuffer[.5cm]{1-2}&\\
        \hline
        \addvbuffer[0.0cm 0.9cm]{2-1} & \addvbuffer[0.5cm]{2-2} &\\
    \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Answer 2

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{array}
\begin{document}

\begin{tabular}{|p{1cm}|>{\vspace{.5cm}}p{1cm}<{\vspace{.5cm}}|}
    \hline
        1-1 & 1-2\\
        \hline
        2-1 & 2-2\\
    \hline
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

In your original your paragraph entries are only single line so it is hard to spot the difference between p and m the p makes the reference point be on the baseline of the first line (like \parbox[t]) and m makes the reference point be at the vertical centre offset by the math axis height, (like \parbox[c]) So on a single line entry this only slightly lowers the entries in the second column.