Override table in sphinx

Question

I'm using sphinx to generate documentations. The tables it produces via latex are pretty ugly, so I'd like to give them some global styling. What I'd like to achieve is

• Always 100% width
• A header row color
• Bold header text
• Maybe some more spacing

So what sphinx does is it writes tables like this:

\begin{tabulary}{\linewidth}{|L|L|L|}
\hline
\textsf{\relax 
Nummer
} & \textsf{\relax 
Name
} & \textsf{\relax 
Bemerkungen
}\\
\hline
0
 & 
Allgemeines
 & 
Enthält Meta-Informationen zum Dossier
\\
[...]
\hline\end{tabulary}

My approach was something like this (for the header row color):

\RequirePackage{tabu}

\definecolor{tablehead}{rgb}{0.7294117647058823, 0.6823529411764706, 0.6235294117647059}

\renewenvironment{tabulary}[2]{\bgroup\begin{tabu} to \textwidth{#2}
    \rowcolor{tablehead}
}%
{\end{tabu}\egroup}

This results in following error:

! Missing # inserted in alignment preamble.
<to be read again> 
                   &
l.294 \hline\end{tabulary}

? x

Answer 1

The L column type is useless as far as tabu is concerned.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}

\usepackage{tabu,tabulary}
\usepackage[table]{xcolor}

\definecolor{tablehead}{rgb}{0.7294117647058823, 0.6823529411764706, 0.6235294117647059}

% redefine the L column type
\newcolumntype{L}{X[l]<{\strut}}

\renewenvironment{tabulary}[3]
 {\noindent\tabu to \textwidth{#2}\hline\rowcolor{tablehead}}
 {\endtabu}


\begin{document}

\begin{tabulary}{\linewidth}{|L|L|L|}
\hline
\textsf{Nummer} & \textsf{Name} & \textsf{Bemerkungen}\\
%\hline
0
 & 
Allgemeines
 & 
Enthält Meta-Informationen zum Dossier
\\
\hline
\end{tabulary}

\end{document}

Note that we have to swallow the first \hline otherwise and place it by hand, because it's illegal after \rowcolor.

Answer 2

Since sphinx 1.6.5 you can now add files

_templates/latex.tex_t
_templates/longtable.tex_t
_templates/tabular.tex_t
_templates/tabulary.tex_t

and override everything quite nicely. You can get the templates from github or from sphinx source.

I don't think there is any documentation for it yet, at least I couldn't find it.