How to draw lines and put objects relative to other lines

Question

I'm trying to draw a simple line, and at the end of that line include a table. I would like to do it without having to compute myself the position where the table needs to be drawn. How can I do that?

many thanks

Answer 1

You could use the wonderfully versatile and popular tikz package; there are lots of way to do it, but one such method follows.

% arara: pdflatex 
% !arara: indent: {overwrite: yes}
\documentclass{article} 
\usepackage{tikz} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{tikzpicture} 
    \coordinate (a) at (0,0); 
    \node[minimum width=3cm] (b) at (1,0){\begin{tabular}{cc}1&2\\3&4\end{tabular}}; 
    \draw (a)--(b); 
\end{tikzpicture} 
\end{document}

Answer 2

Without tikz ;) (for a change)

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
  \noindent
  \rule[0.6ex]{1in}{1pt}
  \begin{tabular}{cc}
    1&2\\
    3&4
  \end{tabular}
\end{document}