Re: [Groff] macros in tbl

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi SGT,

> > You can use the zero-width space character \& to stop `.' being at
> > the start of a line, e.g.
> >
> >     \&.UR foo:///bar
> >     \&.UE
>
> hello Ralph, do you mean this?
>
> 2014-2015::T{
> It is neither this nor that while it's both this and that
> T}:
> \&.UR http://example.com
> \&.UE,

Probably not, as you've apparently a multi-line field contining .UR that
isn't in T{...T}.

> that doesn't work. this one thought comes closer:
>
> 2014-2015::T{
> It is neither this nor that while it's both this and that
> T}:\&
> .UR http://example.com
> \&.UE,
>
> with the caveat that a newline is introduced and i can get rid of it.
> that's the newline after first '\&' and without it .UR is not passed
> to troff.

Here's three lines of output from fgrep after I indicate end of file to
tbl with Ctrl-D, shown as ^D.

    $ tbl | fgrep .UR
    .TS
    tab(/);
    l l.
    foo/bar
    .UR foo:///bar
    .UE
    \&.UR/as text
    .TE
    ^D
    .nr 3w0 \n[3w0]>?\w\[tbl]\&.UR\[tbl]
    .UR foo:///bar
    \&\h'|\n[3cl0]u'\&.UR\h'|\n[3cl1]u'as text
    $

That shows the `\&.UR/as text' is treated as two columns of plain text
whereas `.UR foo:///bar' has been passed through unaltered for troff to
see.

I'm still not clear what you are trying to achieve.  Do you wish `.UR'
to appear in the table as text?  If so, use \&.  Or do you want a URL to
appear in the table, using .UR?

Cheers, Ralph.