Changing the font size for tables, latex output

[mtgstuber]

I'm working on a specification documented using Sphinx. To make the PDF output readable, I have increased the latexpdf font size to 12 points, while decreasing the font size on my headers and footers. The specification has some tables that have a lot of data in them. They would be best handled by using a smaller font size.

I was able to reduce the size of my table header by adding \protected\def\sphinxstyletheadfamily{\footnotesize} to the preamble element of latex_elements in conf.py, but it's not obvious to me which style I need to extend / override to change the font used for the rows. I tied poking around in the .tex file that Sphinx generates, but I couldn't identify a sphinx latex element that controls this.

I have a similar problem with some code blocks. For this document, it would make sense to have the code be a smaller font size. I see that Sphinx generates a SphinxVerbatim macro that is used in the .tex file, but it's not clear to me whether I can extend it to decrease the font size.

Any wisdom would be appreciated. Thank you.

[tayfuryldz]

For code blocks there is a supported latex_elements hook for exactly this: fvset. On current Sphinx the default is \\fvset{fontsize=auto}, and you can override it, for example:

latex_elements = {
    "fvset": r"\fvset{fontsize=\footnotesize}",
}

That applies through FancyVerb to the verbatim/code-block rendering, so you don't need to patch the generated sphinxVerbatim environment.

Tables are a little different. \sphinxstyletheadfamily only controls the header-family hook, which is why your change affects the header and not every body cell. There isn't an equivalent single latex_elements "table body font size" setting documented alongside fvset. If only particular dense tables need shrinking, I'd prefer a local raw-LaTeX/grouping customization around those tables rather than globally redefining Sphinx's table internals; otherwise a preamble-level LaTeX customization can deliberately make the global choice.

So for the code-block half, fvset is the stable Sphinx configuration surface; avoid redefining sphinxVerbatim itself.