Re: [Groff] tbl problems in man

[Larry Kollar]

Eric S. Raymond wrote:

>>> The only problem with using w is that the number that needs to go to
>>> go next to it is brittle -- it may break if the table indent
>>> changes, or if the the point size changes, or if the margins change.
>> 
>> I fully agree.  It can make such man pages ugly to read.
> 
> This I don't understand.  Ugly to read for whom?  If w is chosen well 
> for the indent and point size, it will look as though the table was 
> filled to right margin by a smart algorithm.

What might work for nroff might not work for troff -- and then there are 
things like -rS11 for people who want a little larger type. I'm fond of saying 
that manpages are the first widespread example of single-sourced 
documentation -- and you can't make many assumptions about how people 
want to display single-sourced documents.

Outside of manpages, I'd personally welcome the percentage width unit and 
"expand to fill the line" extensions in tbl -- my primary output targets are 
PDF and HTML, and these extensions would work well for my documentation. 
I just don't think they'd be quite as good in manpages. I took a stab at coding 
them myself a while back, but couldn't get my head around the source.


>> I still think that tables with T{...T} don't work well within man
>> pages.  Instead, .TP and TQ should be used, as demonstrated in the
>> attached file.
> 
> Yes?  And what do we do if the table has more than two columns?

You might want to have a look at groff_ms(7). I put a lot of effort into making 
those tables work well for both console & print, and didn't use w at all.

-- Larry