Tables and charts

Tables

@table
Name | Age
-----|----
John | 20
Ada  | 36
@endtable

Cells are separated by |. Leading and trailing pipes are optional, and whitespace around cells is trimmed, so you can align the source however reads best.

The separator row is optional. Without one, the first row is the header.

Alignment

Colons in the separator row set column alignment:

@table
Item      | Qty | Price
:---------|:---:|------:
Widget    |  3  |  4.50
@endtable

Left, centre, right. A row with a different cell count than the header is a warning, not an error — the table still renders.

Charts

A chart can stand alone:

@chart(type="bar", title="Monthly signups", unit="users")
Jan | 20
Feb | 35
Mar | 50
@endchart

Rows accept Label | 20, Label: 20 or Label 20. A first row whose trailing cells are not numbers is read as a header naming the series.

Charts from tables

Better: let the table draw itself, so the numbers and the picture cannot disagree.

@table(chart="bar", x="Month", y="Signups, Revenue", title="Growth")
Month | Signups | Revenue
------|---------|--------
Jan   | 20      | 1200
Feb   | 35      | 2400
Mar   | 50      | 3100
@endtable

Which renders as:

Growth

Month	Signups	Revenue
Jan	20	1200
Feb	35	2400
Mar	50	3100

Add a row and the chart follows. The table is still rendered underneath, so the figures stay reachable as text.

Argument	Meaning	Default
`chart`	`bar`, `line`, `area`, `stacked`, `pie`	absent — table only
`x`	Header of the label column	first column
`y`	Comma-separated value columns	every other numeric column
`title`	Chart title	none
`unit`	Value unit	none

Chart types

line

Q	North	South
1	10	12
2	14	9
3	18	15

pie renders as a proportion bar rather than a circle: lengths can be compared accurately, angles cannot.

What charts will not do

note

Title: No script, no dependency Charts are inline SVG themed by CSS custom properties, so the surrounding page owns the colours and the output works offline and in print.

note

Title: Three series, then folding The palette is capped at three slots because that is what validates for colour-vision-deficient and normal-vision separation on both light and dark grounds. Further series fold into "Other" with a warning rather than inventing hues that cannot be told apart.

note

Title: A cell that is not a number charts as zero It also records a warning naming the cell. A true gap would need every SVG builder to understand absent points, which is not implemented yet.

Interactivity

Charts are static by default. xtxt export html --interactive inlines a small script that lets a reader hover for a value and hide a series. It cannot change the chart type — that is the author's choice, made with chart=.

Without the flag, exported HTML contains no script at all, which is what makes it safe to embed in someone else's page.