Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!ncar!gatech!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!cornell!allan
From: allan@rind.cs.cornell.edu (James Allan)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: LaTeX: dotted vertical bars in tabular
Summary: Can it be done?
Keywords: LaTeX, tabular, dots
Message-ID: <47607@cornell.UUCP>
Date: 26 Oct 90 02:20:03 GMT
Sender: nobody@cornell.UUCP
Organization: Cornell Univ. CS Dept. Ithaca NY
Lines: 23

With any luck, there will be an obvious solution to this problem.  A
secretary here at Cornell wants to create a table in LaTeX such that
some of the columns are separated by a dotted rather than a solid
line.

I couldn't find anything obvious in the LaTeX manual (I don't seem to
have a copy of the TeX book).  Playing around, I came up with this
far-from-pretty solution:

	\newcommand{\dotsep}{$\,\;\stackrel{\textstyle\cdot}{\cdot}\,\;$}
	\begin{tabular}{l@{\dotsep}l}
	...

If you've finished retching because of the sheer disgustingness of the
solution, let me point out that not only is it kind of gross, but it
doesn't even work quite right--the dots don't look all that nice.

Can someone tell me if there is a better solution to this little
puzzle?  Better yet, if there IS a solution, can someone tell me what
it is\ldots

Thank you.
			-- james