row 1, column 1 | column 2 | column 3 | column 4 | +------------------------+------------+----------+----------+ | body row 2 | Cells may span columns. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ | body row 3 | Cells may | - Table cells | +------------------------+ span rows. | - contain | | body row 4 | | - body elements. | +------------------------+------------+---------------------+ Intersections use '+', row separators use '-' (except for one optional head/body row separator, which uses '='), and column separators use '|'. Passing the above table to the `parse()` method will result in the following data structure:: ([24, 12, 10, 10], [[(0, 0, 1, ['Header row, column 1']), (0, 0, 1, ['Header 2']), (0, 0, 1, ['Header 3']), (0, 0, 1, ['Header 4'])]], [[(0, 0, 3, ['body row 1, column 1']), (0, 0, 3, ['column 2']), (0, 0, 3, ['column 3']), (0, 0, 3, ['column 4'])], [(0, 0, 5, ['body row 2']), (0, 2, 5, ['Cells may span columns.']), None, None], [(0, 0, 7, ['body row 3']), (1, 0, 7, ['Cells may', 'span rows.', '']), (1, 1, 7, ['- Table cells', '- contain', '- body elements.']), None], [(0, 0, 9, ['body row 4']), None, None, None]]) The first item is a list containing column widths (colspecs). The second item is a list of head rows, and the third is a list of body rows. Each row contains a list of cells. Each cell is either None (for a cell unused because of another cell's span), or a tuple. A cell tuple contains four items: the number of extra rows used by the cell in a vertical span (morerows); the number of extra columns used by the cell in a horizontal span (morecols); the line offset of the first line of the cell contents; and the cell contents, a list of lines of text. z\+=[=+]+=\+ *$c