**Summary.** The `python-docx` table API is designed for _uniform_
tables (no merged cells, no nested tables). Naive processing of DOCX
tables using this API produces duplicate text when the table has merged
cells. Add a more sophisticated parsing method that reads only "root"
cells (those with an actual `<tc>` element) and skip cells spanned by a
merge.
In the process, abandon use of the `tabulate` package for this job
(which is also designed for uniform tables) and remove the whitespace
padding it adds for visual alignment of columns. Separate the text for
each cell with a single newline ("\n").
Since it's little extra trouble, add support for nested tables such that
their text also contributes to the `Table.text` string.
The new `._iter_table_texts()` method will also be used for parsing
tables in headers and footers (where they are frequently used for layout
purposes) in a closely following PR.
Fixes#2106.
The sample docs directory contains the following files:
example-10k.html - A 10-K SEC filing in HTML format
layout-parser-paper.pdf - A PDF copy of the layout parser paper
factbook.xml/factbook.xsl - Example XML/XLS files that you can use to test stylesheets
These documents can be used to test out the parsers in the library. In addition, here are
instructions for pulling in some sample docs that are too big to store in the repo.
XBRL 10-K
You can get an example 10-K in inline XBRL format using the following curl. Note, you need
to have the user agent set in the header or the SEC site will reject your request.
curl -O \
-A '${organization} ${email}'
https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/311094/000117184321001344/0001171843-21-001344.txt
You can parse this document using the HTML parser.
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