# Math mode in longtabu

I'm trying to typeset a very long table that spans a few pages and contains exclusively mathematical formulae.

In order to accomplish that I'm using the \longtabu environment provided by the tabu package, but in the tabu documentation it is stated that "longtable is not designed to work in math mode" and thus the mathematical mode doesn't work for \longtabu.

My question is: how can I still write in math mode avoiding to write each formula in between $...$ like I did in the following piece of code? Any suggestion is appreciated and can involve different packages and/or environments.

Here is my code (it's not the complete table, but gives the idea of what I'm trying to do) and the output it gives:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\tabulinesep=1mm
\begin{longtabu} to \linewidth  {l X[3,c] X[1,c]}
\toprule
& $f(t)$ & $F(s)$\\
\midrule
1. & Unit impulse $\delta(t)$ & 1\\
2. & Unit step $1(t)$ & $\displaystyle \frac{1}{s}$\\
3. & $t$ & $\displaystyle \frac{1}{s^2}$\\
4. & $\displaystyle \frac{t^n}{(n-1)!} \quad \left(n=1,2,3,\ldots\right)$ & $\displaystyle \frac{1}{s^n}$\\
\bottomrule
\end{longtabu}
\end{document}


• I wouldn't widen the columns, as the table becomes unreadable: the single “t” in the third row seems to be drowning in a sea of white space. However, specifying the third column as >{\hfil$\displaystyle}X[1,c]<{$} seems to do. – egreg Jan 21 '14 at 22:57
• @egreg: thank you for your comment. This is just the first draft in which i was "testing" longtabu. Phase two is all about improving readability: I'll make sure to keep in mind your suggestion. – Pier Paolo Jan 21 '14 at 23:02

You need to use $ in the columns with mixed text/math (or alternatively make those math columns and use \text for the text) but the last column is just math so there you can add the $ in the preamble. tabu unfortunately redefines the >{} <{} syntax in an incompatible way but for simple cases, as here, it still works as it should.

All entries in the final column are set in math display style, with no additional markup required for each entry.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{tabu}
\usepackage{longtable}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\begin{document}
\tabulinesep=1mm
\begin{longtabu} to \linewidth  {l X[3,c] >{$\displaystyle}X[1,c]<{$}}
\toprule
& $f(t)$ & F(s)\\
\midrule
1. & Unit impulse $\delta(t)$ & 1\\
2. & Unit step $1(t)$ &  \frac{1}{s}\\
3. & $t$ & \frac{1}{s^2}\\
4. & $\displaystyle \frac{t^n}{(n-1)!} \quad \left(n=1,2,3,\ldots\right)$ &
\frac{1}{s^n}\\
\bottomrule
\end{longtabu}
\end{document}