A.5.3 Translator functions

Orgtbl mode has built-in translator functions: orgtbl-to-csv (comma-separated values), orgtbl-to-tsv (TAB-separated values), orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-html, orgtbl-to-texinfo, orgtbl-to-unicode and orgtbl-to-orgtbl. They use the generic translator, orgtbl-to-generic, which delegates translations to various export back-ends.

Properties passed to the function through the ‘ORGTBL SEND’ line take precedence over properties defined inside the function. For example, this overrides the default LaTeX line endings, \\, with \\[2mm]:

#+ORGTBL: SEND test orgtbl-to-latex :lend " \\\\[2mm]"

For a new language translator, define a converter function. It can be a generic function, such as shown in this example. It marks a beginning and ending of a table with ‘!BTBL!’ and ‘!ETBL!’; a beginning and ending of lines with ‘!BL!’ and ‘!EL!’; and uses a TAB for a field separator:

(defun orgtbl-to-language (table params)
  "Convert the orgtbl-mode TABLE to language."
  (orgtbl-to-generic
   table
   (org-combine-plists
    '(:tstart "!BTBL!" :tend "!ETBL!" :lstart "!BL!" :lend "!EL!" :sep "\t")
    params)))

The documentation for the orgtbl-to-generic function shows a complete list of parameters, each of which can be passed through to orgtbl-to-latex, orgtbl-to-texinfo, and any other function using that generic function.

For complicated translations the generic translator function could be replaced by a custom translator function. Such a custom function must take two arguments and return a single string containing the formatted table. The first argument is the table whose lines are a list of fields or the symbol hline. The second argument is the property list consisting of parameters specified in the ‘#+ORGTBL: SEND’ line. Please share your translator functions by posting them to the Org users mailing list, at emacs-orgmode@gnu.org.