How to rotate landscape table page in PDF?

Question

Currently I am using

\usepackage{rotating}

\begin{sidewaystable}
\begin{tabular}...\end{tabular}
\end{sidewaystable}

to typeset landscape tables, which works great.

But I want to rotate that page in the resulting pdf (generated by pdflatex) for more convenient screen reading.

I found the landscape environment which is also mentioned in another question. I tried it like this:

\usepackage{pdflscape}

\begin{landscape}
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}...\end{tabular}
\end{table}
\end{landscape}

This kind of works, except the original table does not fit anymore on the page, i.e. sidewaystable makes better use of the available space.

Thus my question: Is it somehow possible to just use sidewaystable and instruct pdflatex to rotate it?

Or instruct pdflatex to mark it as rotated such that the PDF viewer knows what to do?

Answer 1

To make the table fit your landscape, put this in your preamble:

\usepackage{geometry}
\usepackage{pdflscape}

And for your landscape page, do this:

\newgeometry{margin=1cm} % modify this if you need even more space
\begin{landscape}

%put your table here

\end{landscape}
\restoregeometry

If you are working in a document that makes use of fancyhdr, you might want to put \thispagestyle{empty} on your landscape page so that you can make use of the space normally occupied by the header/footer. (and it looks cleaner in my opinion)

Answer 2

I found it to be hard to accommodate both good landscape when viewing on the computer screen, as well as printing everything "right". My problem was with PStricks figure, which looked fine in the sidewaysfig, but was "clipped" when I rotate the page.

To "fix" the issue I have used the good old:

\vspace{-1cm}
\hspace{-1cm}

I know, this is "bad" but hey it worked for me =) I does mess with your head since in a rotated-sidewaysfig page vspace controls horizontal position and hspace - vertical one.

Answer 3

You can use sidewaystable and rotate these pages using the following script:

\batchmode
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{pdfpages}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usepackage{xstring}

\newcommand{\ifassoc}[4]{%
    \edef\dotheloop{%
        \noexpand\foreach \noexpand\a/\noexpand\b in {#2} {%
            \noexpand\IfEq{\noexpand\a}{#1}{%
                \noexpand\gdef\noexpand\memberresult{true}%
                \noexpand\xdef\noexpand\assocresult{\noexpand\b}%
                \noexpand\breakforeach%
            }{}%
        }%
    }%
    \xdef\assocresult{}%
    \xdef\memberresult{false}
    \dotheloop%
    \IfEq{\memberresult}{true}{#3}{#4}%
}%


% Theses file
\def\malfile{main.pdf}
\pdfximage{\malfile}

\begin{document}
\newcount\malcount \malcount=0 % This is a page counter...
\newbox\malbox % This is a virtual box...

\loop % Let's test all the pages one by one...
\advance\malcount by 1%

% The pages that you would like to rotate (Landscape)
\ifassoc{\the\malcount}{107,108,109,110,112,113,114}{
 %Landscape 
\includepdf[pages={\the\malcount}, fitpaper, angle=270]{\malfile}
}{
% Portrait
\includepdf[pages={\the\malcount}, fitpaper, angle=0]{\malfile}
}

\ifnum\malcount<\pdflastximagepages\repeat

\end{document}