\
multicolumn
entries), to look like:
----------------- x y -------------- 1 2 3 4 5 ----------------- 1 2 3 4 5 -----------------
However, this doesn’t satisfy everyone: many want the labelling in a
single cell at the top left of the table. It sounds a simple enough
requirement, yet it calls for some slightly tricky LaTeX coding.
The slashbox package does the job for you: it defines
commands \
slashbox
and \
backslashbox
, each taking the two
labels as arguments. It draws a picture with the two labels on either
side of a slanting line; the command (and hence the picture) may be
placed in the corner cell, where the labelled row and column meet.
picture
mode to draw its line, and picture mode has many
tedious restrictions (and doesn’t, in all honesty, produce
particularly good pictures). Load slashbox with the pict2e
package, and at least the picture quality will be improved.
Documentation of slashbox is less than satisfactory: a
LaTeX source file of rather startling starkness accompanies the
package file in the distribution. It does, however, process to a
DVI file that gives some idea of how the \
slashbox
may be
expected to look. (The third example in the file shows the effect of
picture
mode’s restrictions: the dividing line doesn’t
go from corner to corner in the box: to correct this requires revision
of slashbox — pict2e alone doesn’t help in this
regard.)
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=slashbox