Just a short note to myself how to align a table in vim. I found the answer here. We start with the following example, a part of a LateX table (that was generated with an openoffice plugin). But the columns ("&" characters) are not aligned vertically, which is ugly.
C1 & c3 & 0.30593 & C1 \\
C1X & c3 & 0.13418 & C1X \\
C2 & c3 & 0.08862 & C2 \\
C2X & c3 & -0.08100 & C2X \\
Of course, aligning the & characters can easily be done automagically (and this time I did not even have to write the script myself!)
- download the vim Align plugin
- install it. details on how to install are on the plugin's page
- use it: select a block and type (in this case, we want to align the & character):
:Align & - watch the magic
C1 & c3 & 0.30593 & C1 \\
C1X & c3 & 0.13418 & C1X \\
C2 & c3 & 0.08862 & C2 \\
C2X & c3 & -0.08100 & C2X \\
Actually, this was just an example. The Align package has a special command to align LaTeX tables, which also aligns the newine commands \\. Just type \tt instead of :Align &.
(And in case you want to know: the table shows AMBER ff03 atom types and partial charges of an octylglucoside molecule, as calculated by AM1-BCC. But you are probably not interested :) )