Re: [Groff] tbl: <T> and (T) as tab

[Ted Harding]

I have to agree with Carsten here: it looks as though Bernd has
misundertstood what the authors meant. See in-line below.

On 16-Jul-2014 18:44:35 Carsten Kunze wrote:
> Maybe this is a misunderstanding.
> 
>> 1) Sandra L Emerson, Karen Paulsell - troff TYPESETTING for UNIX(TM)
>> Systems (1987)
>> This book seems to come from System V.
>> It documents that "(T)" has the meaning of a tab char for cell jumping.
> 
> On page 80 it is mentioned: "In the following example, the TAB key is
> indicated by (T) in the input."
> 
>> 2) David Barron, Mike Rees - Text Processing and Typesetting with UNIX
>> (1987)
>> It documents that "<T>" has the meaning of a tab char for cell jumping.
> 
> On page 128 it is mentioned: "Note that in this figure, <T> denotes the
> tab character."
> 
>> So far, groff does not use these.  With these additions the line with
>> tab(...); is no longer necessary.
> 
> Is tab(...); really an issue? I don't think so.

I do not have the Emerson and Paulsell book, but I do have the
Barron and Rees book, from which I can confirm Carsten's qutation
from page 128. And also, on page 136 "The global options", it
states (of course):

"* tab(x) - recognise x as the data separator in place of tab."

So there is already adequate flexibility; "(T)" and "<T>" were not
intended to be used literally as data separators -- they merely
denote whatever is being used as the separtor; and there is no
need to consider incorporating them into groff!

>> I have now trouble with C++.  So could someone else try to add these
>> character combinations to the .cpp files in src/preproc/tbl?
>> 
>> It might be possible, to allow also strings in the tab()-line as a first
>> step, instead of now only single character methods.
> 
> qtbl is already really very good.

And what is qtbl?

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 16-Jul-2014  Time: 20:48:28
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