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Re: [Groff] tbl X keyletter


From: Steven Starr
Subject: Re: [Groff] tbl X keyletter
Date: Fri, 10 Jan 2003 10:29:48 -0500
User-agent: Mutt/1.4i

Werner:

The latest public releases of AT&T document production tools ([n]troff,
eqn, tbl, grap, pic, MM macros, etc.) were collected in a set called
Documenter's Workbench (DWB). The last version of which I am aware was
DWB Version 3.4. DWB 3.4 provided the MPS macro package, which provided
some direct Postscript support, including rotation, shading, line widths
and styles, and picture inclusion. It also provided limited support for
colored text, via the the .CL macro, which permitted the selection of
foreground and background colors for text, as in:

        .CL red "This text will be red on white"

        .CL "black on white" "This text will be in reverse"

        .CL blue
        This text will be in blue.
        So will this text.
        .CL

I don't know if I'm volunteering or not, but I'll take a look at the
source code and see what I can do. How should I access the code, other
than hacking around with the latest version that I downloaded (1.18)?

Steve


On Sat 05:34 PM 01/04/2003, Werner LEMBERG wrote:
> 
> > I have been eager to abandon DWB troff entirely for groff, but I
> > have been waiting for groff to catch up to troff in a few key areas,
> > first.  Now that color is available for text and pic, the only
> > missing feature seems to be the X column keyword that is available
> > in DWB tbl. This is an incredibly useful.
> 
> I've never used DWB troff -- are you saying that it supports colours?
> 
> > From the man page: It is used to "increase the normal width of this
> > column to use the remainder of the page width (between margins)
> > after the widths of the other columns have been subtracted.  This
> > modifier is useful for a column containing text blocks, where it is
> > desired to make the column as wide as possible without exceeding the
> > page width.  At most one column can have this modifier."
> >
> > I can't seem to find this feature in groff tbl.  Am I missing
> > something?
> 
> This feature is not in GNU tbl.
> 
> > If I'm not, this would be a great feature to add to groff tbl.
> 
> I've looked into the source code, and I found out that it is quite
> tricky to implement.  If you weaken the condition to
> 
>   "Increase the minimal width of this column to use the remainder of
>   the page width (between margins) after the minimal widths of the
>   other columns have been subtracted."
> 
> then it is rather trivial.  I don't know whether this is what DWB tbl
> does.
> 
> Sorry, I don't have time to add this feature to GNU tbl.  Are you
> volunteering?  The key function is table::compute_widths() in file
> src/preproc/tbl/table.cc.
> 
> 
>     Werner

-- 
 Steven Starr
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