vertical rule in tabular cell over part of its height

Question

I want to insert a vertical line in a tabular cell which doesn't run over the full height of the cell, but only 90% of it. I tried:

• \vrule height 0.45\height depth 0.45\height, but \height throws errors in tabular cells
• scaling down \vrule, but \scalebox{1}[.9]{\vrule} doesn't work

MWE

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\begin{tabular}{p{0.52\linewidth} @{\hspace{0.05\linewidth}} c @{\hspace{0.05\linewidth}} p{0.32\linewidth}}
  \begin{minipage}{\linewidth}\blindtext[2]\end{minipage}
  &
  \vrule height 0.35\textheight depth 0.35\textheight
  &
  \begin{minipage}{\linewidth}\blindtext\end{minipage}
\end{tabular}
\end{document}

Output

This roughly produces the output I want, but of course using \textheight isn't the right thing to do here.

If that helps, I thought of a way of filling the cell with some box in which I then can use \height. Would that be an approach?

PS: I am aware of the multicol package, but it doesn't meet my needs of vertically centered columns with different widths.

Answer 1

Suppose your:

\vrule height 0.4\height depth 0.4\height

If you mean \height as maximal height of two columns, then you must to measure them using setbox:

\input plipsum
\newdimen\height

\def\twocols#1:#2#3:#4{{\emergencystretch=2em \parindent=0pt
   \setbox0=\vbox{\hsize=#1\hsize #2}\setbox1=\vbox{\hsize=#3\hsize #4}%
   \height=\ht0 \ifdim\height<\ht1 \height=\ht1 \fi % maximal height
   \hbox to\hsize{$
      \vcenter{\unvbox0}
      \hfil 
      \vrule height .4\height depth.4\height %<<<--- here is your \vrule 
      \hfil
      \vcenter{\unvbox1}$}}}


\twocols .5:{\lipsum1} .4:{\lipsum{2-3}}

\bye

Answer 2

I'm assuming the height of the vertical bar should correspond to the height of the block on the right-hand side. If this assumption is correct, you could achieve your formatting objective by placing two tabularx environments side by side. By default, they will be centered vertically relative to each other.

(The horizontal line at the top edge of the following screenshot is there just to illustrate the width of the text block.)

\documentclass{scrartcl}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{blindtext,tabularx}

\begin{document}
\hrule\medskip % to illustrate width of textblock

\noindent
\setlength\tabcolsep{1em}%  % choose amount of intercolumn whitespace
\begin{tabularx}{0.55\textwidth}{@{}X}
  \blindtext[2]
\end{tabularx}% snug up the two tabularx environments
\begin{tabularx}{0.45\textwidth}{|X@{}}
  \blindtext
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}