experiences with lout tables...

[Greg A. Woods]

Wow.

I'm learning, but it's slow.  ;-)

I've yet to get @HAdjust to work, and continue to resort to enclosing
the table in a @CD, and using an invisible column with @HExpand in its
format specification....

I did Finally produce a pleasing (to my eyes, anyway), example invoice
(which I now hope to generate with a script that supplies details such
as the invoice number, date, details, totals, etc.).

I had no luck at all with @Line or @DoubleLine in column data (nothing
appears), and little luck with @Rule and @DoubleRule.  I found I had to
use @HExpand @Rule to get more than a small line.

Similarly with the "above" and "below" lines in rows, I get
in-consistent line lengths within the same table.

Even with all the restrictions of tables, such as those for spanning
columns, there's really only one critical feature I really do need.  It
also seems as if it wouldn't be that hard to provide (naive as I am to
these things! ;-).  Specifically it's the ability to optionally drop the
data in a column to the bottom of the current row.  Eg:

        Item #      Description        Price
        ------ -------------------- ----------
            41 a single-line item        99.99
            42 This is a multi-line
               description of an
               item.                   9483.32
            43 another single-liner     382.45

Would @HShift be of any help here, if only I could calculate how far?

It would also be very nice to have some default alignment rules ala tbl
to avoid needing to place '^'s all through the data.

BTW, w.r.t. my earlier mail, I found that the spacing I had to introduce
to separate two multi-line objects in a display was due to their line
spacing being calculated too early (i.e. before I had set the
@InitialFont up to 12p).  As it turned out I reset the document
@InitialFont back to 10p, and was able to remove the 0.1v @High {} I had
between the objects.  It now looks OK again.  In troff (or at least in
MM), setting the font (.S) also adjusted the line spacing (.vs) as
appropriate (though of course it can be overridden as desired).  Perhaps
lout should do the same by default.  Has anyone else encountered this
difficulty?

-- 
                                                        Greg A. Woods

+1 416 443-1734                 VE3TCP                  robohack!woods
Planix, Inc. <address@hidden>; Secrets of the Weird <address@hidden>