Re: [Groff] problems with tbl underline

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Michelle,

> I have been using tbl and nroff in Unix SunOS5.8 to create an ASCII
> table by doing:
> 
> tbl test.tbl | nroff | col -b > file.txt
> 
> However, for some unknown reason, some rows in test.tbl are not being
> displayed in the ASCII table.  I checked and the missing rows are the
> ones directly above any "_" on a single line in the code (i.e. rows
> directly above an underline). The ASCII table displays the underline
> correctly, but I'm missing the previous row.  If a add an empty line
> before the "_", the problem is partly fixed, but I still don't get all
> my rows.

Investigate the output of nroff and see if it is using ASCII BS
characters to backspace over a character to output the underscore in
order to underline.  If so, `col -b' is replacing `x^H_' with `_'
deleting the `x'.  You may find `od -c' useful, e.g. `nroff | od -c |
more'.

If that's what's happening, see if your col(1) has an option to do
differently, or see if sed can help.

    sed 's/\(.\)^H_/\1/g'

where `^H' is a real ASCII BS entered, probably, with Ctrl-V Ctrl-H.

Cheers,


Ralph.