Re: [Groff] tbl problems in man

[Tadziu Hoffmann]

I'm not familiar with DocBook, but doesn't it have something
analogous to HTML's "definition list"?  It occurs to me
that some of the "tables" you're discussing might be better
served with such a definition list (as is actually currently
the case).

Not every two-column table is a definition list, but neither
is every definition list best presented as a two-column table
(e.g., the definition tags might have widely varying widths,
and arbitrarily squeezing them to some narrow column is not
necessarily the preferred presentation).  The manpage macros
do not provide a dedicated list environment, but they provide
the basics (RS, RE, TP) with which such lists can be emulated.
Turning these lists into tables, though perhaps possible, is
not necessarily what the original author might have intended.
(Of course, the reverse might also be true, that a list is
used although a table is intended, just because this was
easier to code.)

Nevertheless, does anybody here remember the discussion about
AT&T-tbl's "expand column" feature on this list some months
back?