Re: [Groff] tbl: contolling table width

[Ted Harding]

On 07-Jul-10 19:34:34, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
>> I'll try to follow up Werner's hint later. Meanwhile, looking for
>> something "clever", I seem to have found that the escape "\R'...'"
>> (\R'NAME VAL' sets register named NAME to value VAL) does not work
>> in a table:
> 
> You've missed the following feature of tbl:
> 
>    A data item consisting only of `\Rx' (`x' any character) is
>    replaced by repetitions of character `x' as wide as the column (not
>    joining its neighbours).
> 
> If you use the \E escape character to hide `\R', you get the right
> result, e.g.
> 
>   .TS
>   tab(#);
>   |l2 | l2 | l2 | l |.
>   _
>   Row 1, Col 1#Row 1, Col 2#Row 1, Col 3#\ER'POS1 \n[nl]'Row 1, Col 4
>   Row 2, Col 1#Row 2, Col 2#Row 2, Col 3#\ER'POS2 \n[nl]'Row 2, Col 4
>   .TE
>   .tm POS1 == \n[POS1]
>   .tm POS2 == \n[POS2]
> 
> => POS1 == 0
>    POS2 == 14000
> 
>      Werner

Ah!! Thank you, Werner! I had indeed missed it (though I had looked)
since, when I evoked 'info tbl' and then tried to search using

  /\\R

I got "Search failed." However, following your comment, and since
'info' on Debian is basically the same as 'man' (Debian refuse to
implement real 'info' on ideological grounds), I then did the same
search in 'man tbl' and found it. So it was there in 'info tbl'
as well. Then, in 'info tbl', I tried the search

  /\R

and that did find it!

Ted.

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Date: 07-Jul-10                                       Time: 21:33:38
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