Multirow and rotated column headers

Question

I want to typeset a table with rotatetd column headers (so far it works) stretching over multiple rows.

The problem seems to be that multirow does not adjust the tables row heights, thus I have to do this by hand, and I struggle with this.

Using a slightly adopted solution from Werner (https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/32687/19326), I get the rotating and can have line breaks.

I now want to calculate the height by which I have to stretch my "stretch column". The value I need to calculate is obviously the height of my rotated box, minus the heights of the rows that I am spanning.

How do I retrieve the height of a row? What is the easiest way to calculate objectheight - rowheight1 -rowheight2?

Here is the code I have so far:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{xparse}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{multirow}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{pbox}
\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{calc}
%\NewDocumentCommand{\rot}{O{90} O{1em} m}{\makebox[#2][l]{\rotatebox{#1}{\pbox[t]{\textwidth}{#3}}}}%
\NewDocumentCommand{\rot}{O{90} O{1em} m}{\makebox[#2][l]{\begin{turn}{#1}{\pbox[t]{\textwidth}{#3}}\end{turn}}}%
\begin{document}

\newlength{\myl}
\settowidth{\myl}{Long Long}

\the\myl

\begin{tabular}{cccc}
\toprule
& \multirow{3}{*}{\rot{Long Long\\ text}}& & \\[\the\myl] %column which I want to stretch
Sample & & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Group} \\
\rot{a} & & A & B \\
\midrule
data & data & data & data \\
\bottomrule
\end{tabular}


\widthof{test}
\end{document}

Note: I would like to use \widthof{test} since this appears easier to me than the length fiddling, however the \widthof{test} command actually typesets test in my case.

I looked at Text in rotated multirow cell crosses table border (Basically where I got the idea to adjust the row height from, however I am not sure that my rowheight will always be \normalbaselineskip) and How to rotate text in multirow table? which does not help since it is concerned about the positioning of the rotated text rather than stretching the group of rows to accomodate the text.

Answer 1

The makecell package has all the tools required for that. It allows for line breaks in cells, a common formatting of column heads, and multiline rotated heads. Here are threevariants of what can be done very simply:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{rotating, multirow}
\usepackage{makecell}
\renewcommand\theadfont{\bfseries}

\begin{document}

\settowidth{\rotheadsize}{\bfseries Long long\quad}
\begin{tabular}[t]{cccc}
  \toprule
\addlinespace[-2ex]
  \thead{Sample }& \rothead{Long long\\ text}& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\thead{Group}} \\
  \turnbox{90}{a} & & A & B \\
  \midrule
  data & data & data & data \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\qquad
\renewcommand\theadalign{bc}
\begin{tabular}[t]{cccc}%
  \toprule
  \addlinespace[6.5ex]%
  \thead{Sample } && \multicolumn{2}{c}{\thead{Group}} \\%[6.5ex]
  \turnbox{90}{a} &\multirowthead{-4}[0.3ex]{\rothead{\\[5ex]Long long\\ text}} & A & B \\
  \midrule
  data & data & data & data \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\vskip1cm
\begin{tabular}[t]{cccc}%
  \toprule
  \addlinespace[4ex]%
  \thead{Sample } && \multicolumn{2}{c}{\thead{Group}} \\[3ex]
  \turnbox{90}{a} &\multirowthead{-4}[0.3ex]{\rothead{\\[5ex]Long long\\ text}} & A & B \\
  \midrule
  data & data & data & data \\
  \bottomrule
\end{tabular}
\end{document} 

Answer 2

I hope this will help you, just try this

\settototalheight{\myl}{\hbox{%
\begin{tabular}{cccc}
\\
Sample & & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Group} \\
\rot{a} & & A & B \\
\end{tabular}}}

\the\myl

\settototalheight{\myl}{\hbox{%
\begin{tabular}{cccc}
Sample & & \multicolumn{2}{c}{Group} \\
\rot{a} & & A & B \\
\end{tabular}}}

\the\myl

So I think you need to use \\[\dimexpr\myl-3em\relax]

Answer 3

I worked from @Bernards answer. However, as noted one has to guess the right value for multirow and vertical alignment in multirow is difficult. (ALl answers I found are along the lines do not use multirow and work around this way.

rant Seems like high time for a better multirow implementation. However, I do not know the mechanisms in table, so I am not sure if it is possible. /rant

I worked arround this using tikz. I mark the coordinate and add the text later. This way the text does not stretch the row it is in, therefore I have to take care of the stretching myself. However, as the example shows, I do not want to stretch the column with the text, so that is as intended.

Now finally the code:

\documentclass{report}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\usepackage{pbox}
\usepackage{rotating}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{xparse}

\NewDocumentCommand{\rot}{O{90} O{1em} m}{\makebox[#2][l]{%
    \rotatebox{#1}{\pbox[t]{#2}{#3}}}%
}

\begin{document}

\begin{table*}
\centering
\begin{tabular}{llcccc}
\toprule
&&&&&\\[2.em]
\bfseries{Example} & \bfseries{Platform} & & 
& \multicolumn{2}{c}{\bfseries{Peak Bandwidth}}\\
\cmidrule(l){5-6}
&
&\,\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, baseline=0]\coordinate (h1);\end{tikzpicture}\, 
&\,\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, baseline=0]\coordinate (h2);\end{tikzpicture}\, & Read & Write \\
\midrule

\bottomrule
\end{tabular}

\begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay, 
every node/.append style={
 rotate=90, anchor=west, inner sep=0, align=left, 
 execute at begin node=\setlength{\baselineskip}{1.5ex}}]
    \node at (h1) {Open Source};
    \node at (h2) {Multi\\Row};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{table*}
\end{document}

Note: you need to run tex twice so the positions to place the text are updated

You still need to guess the parameter for the spacer table row (or use the method from answer, but other than that it should be straight forward).