Hi Werner, Werner LEMBERG wrote on Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 08:09:23PM +0200: > Ingo Schwarze wrote: >> Werner Lemberg wrote: >>> Ted Harding wrote:
>>>> There is no 'tbl' option which allows a "no space" to be set in >>>> this context. However, there is a trick. This is to use dummy >>>> columns at the left and/or right, with associated zero column >>>> spacings. [...] >>> Very nice! Could you convert this small tutorial into something >>> which I can add to the tbl manpage? >> Ugh. This looks like an extremely ugly hack abusing tbl(1) in a way >> it was never meant to be used. > ??? I strongly disagree. This was strongly overstated due to the misunderstanding below, but it still doesn't seem very robust across output devices even with groff-1.21: $ /usr/local/bin/tbl colspace.tbl | /usr/local/bin/nroff -Tascii -c | two words | and three words| Note that even newest and shiniest grotty produces an unintended one-column indent and hides the left border line behind the text. That _is_ the consequence of using an edge case feature, i think. Compared to the standard '|c|' as given by Ted: $ /usr/local/bin/tbl col.tbl | /usr/local/bin/nroff -Tascii -c | two words | |and three words | ... which looks just fine. >> In general, you are better off in programming if you avoid using >> counter-intuitive quirks near the borders of languages (in this case, >> empty columns and mixing low-level roff with high-level tbl). > Where is low-level roff? In the table shown by Ted, namely > > .TS > tab(#); > r0|c0|l. > #two words# > #and three words# > .TE > > I only see high-level tbl code. Err, yes, sorry for the confusion, i somehow misread the comparison roff code as part of the example. So that part is settled. Yours, Ingo
