 multirow.sty  V1.6 version (5-May-2004)

 Author:  Jerry Leichter <jerrold.leichter@smarts.com>
          Piet van Oostrum <piet@cs.uu.nl>

 This file may be distributed under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public
 License, as described in lppl.txt in the base LaTeX distribution.
 Either version 1 or, at your option, any later version.

Make an entry that will span multiple rows of a table.

\multirow{nrows}[bigstruts]{width}[fixup]{text}

nrows is the number of rows to span.  It's up to you to leave the other
      rows empty, or the stuff created by \multirow will over-write it.
      With a positive value of nrows the spanned colomns are this row and
      (nrows-1) rows below it. With a negative value of nrows they are
      this row and (1-nrows) above it.

bigstruts is mainly used if you've used bigstrut.sty.  In that case it
      is the total number of uses of \bigstrut within the rows being
      spanned.  Count 2 uses for each \bigstrut, 1 for each \bigstrut[x]
      where x is either t or b.  The default is 0.

width is the width to which the text is to be set, or * to indicate that
      the text argument's natural width is to be used.
 text is the actual text.  If the width was set explicitly, the text will
      be set in a parbox of that width; you can use \\ to force linebreaks
      where you like.

       If the width was given as * the text will be set in LR mode.  If you
      want a multiline entry in this case you should use a tabular or array
      in the text parameter.

      The text is centered vertically within the range spanned by nrows.

fixup is a length used for fine tuning:  The text will be raised (or
      lowered, if fixup is negative) by that length above (below) wherever
       it would otherwise have gone.

For example (using both multirow and bigstrut)

\newcommand{\minitab}[2][l]{\begin{tabular}{#1}#2\end{tabular}}
\begin{tabular}{|c|c|}
\hline
\multirow{4}{1in}{Common g text} & Column g2a\\
      & Column g2b \\
      & Column g2c \\
      & Column g2d \\
\hline
\multirow{3}[6]*{Common g text} & Column g2a\bigstrut\\\cline{2-2}
      & Column g2b \bigstrut\\\cline{2-2}
      & Column g2c \bigstrut\\
\hline
\multirow{4}[8]{1in}{Common g text} & Column g2a\bigstrut\\\cline{2-2}
      & Column g2b \bigstrut\\\cline{2-2}
      & Column g2c \bigstrut\\\cline{2-2}
      & Column g2d \bigstrut\\
\hline
\multirow{4}*{\minitab[c]{Common \\ g text}} & Column g2a\\
      & Column g2b \\
      & Column g2c \\
      & Column g2d \\
\hline
\end{tabular}

If any of the spanned rows are unusually large, or if you're using
bigstrut.sty and \bigstrut's are used assymetrically about the centerline of
the spanned rows, the vertical centering may not come out right.  Use the
fixup argument in this case.

Just before "text" is expanded, the \multirowsetup macro is expanded to      
set up any special environment.  Initially, \multirowsetup contains just
\raggedright.  It can be redefined with \renewcommand.

Bugs:  It's just about impossible to deal correctly with descenders.  The
text will be set up centered, but it may then have a baseline that doesn't
match the baseline of the stuff beside it, in particular if the stuff
beside it has descenders and "text" does not.  This may result in a small
missalignment.  About all that can be done is to do a final touchup on
"text", using the fixup optional argument.  (Hint:  If you use a measure
like .1ex, there's a reasonable chance that the fixup will still be correct
if you change the point size.)

\multirow is mainly designed for use with table, as opposed to array,
environments.  It will not work well in an array environment since the lines
have an extra \jot of space between them which it won't account for.  Fixing
this is difficult in general, and doesn't seem worth it.  The bigstruts
argument can be used to provide a semi-automatic fix:  First set
\bigstrutjot to .5\jot.  Then simply repeat nrows as the bigstruts argument.
This will be close, but probably not exact; you can use the fixup argument
to refine the result.  (If you do this repeatedly, you'll probably want to
wrap these steps up in a simple macro.  Note that the modified \bigstrutjot
value will not give reasonable results if you have bigstruts and use this
argument for its intended purpose elsewhere.  In that case, you might want 
to set it locally.)

If you use \multirow with the colortbl package you have to take
precautions if you want to color the column that has the \multirow in it.
colortbl works by coloring each cell separately. So if you use \multirow
with a positive nrows value, colortbl will first color the top cell, then
\multirow will typeset nrows cells starting with this cell, and later
colortbl will color the other cells, effectively hiding the text in that
area. This can be solved by putting the \multirow is the last row with a
negative nrows value.
Example:

 \begin{tabular}{l>{\columncolor{yellow}}l}
   aaaa & \\
   cccc & \\
   dddd & \multirow{-3}*{bbbb}\\
 \end{tabular}
                                                                                                     