[Groff] Re: another tbl peculiarity

[Gunnar Ritter]

Werner LEMBERG <address@hidden> wrote:

> Note that heirloom's output is worse (I've used a compiled CVS version
> from 2007-Jan-09).  Using `tbl | nroff -Tlp' I get
>
>   a a               c c
>   [7      b b b b b
>         b b b b b
>         b b b b b
>         b
>                     e e
>   [7d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>   d d
>
> <note>
>   The `[7' is actually `<ESC>7' -- looks like a bug...  Supposedly it
>   should move up one line.  However, neither `less' nor my xterm
>   console understand this, and it isn't helpful for output redirected
>   to a file.

The output of nroff -Tlp needs to be filtered with col -x to
get plain text.

> </note>
>
> Apparently, heirloom's tbl uses the minimum width of the first column
> for the whole span.

I agree that this is not optimal, but I wouldn't alter the
behavior without introducing additional options or such in
order to avoid unexpected changes in existing documents.

Gunnar