Re: [Groff] Suggested tbl enhancement

[T. Kurt Bond]

Here's an example of the existing expand option:

    .\" groff -Tascii -ms -t tbl-ex.ms
    .LP
    This is an example table.
    .TS
    allbox, tab(#), expand;
    C C L.
    42#23#T{
    This is a paragraph in a table.  Hopefully it will be long enough to
    serve as a useful example.
    T}
    .TE
    .LP
    This is after the example table.

with the output

    This is an example table.

    +--------------+----------------+---------------------------+
    |    42        |      23        |       This is a para-     |
    |              |                |       graph in a  ta-     |
    |              |                |       ble.  Hopefully     |
    |              |                |       it will be long     |
    |              |                |       enough to serve     |
    |              |                |       as   a   useful     |
    |              |                |       example.            |
    +--------------+----------------+---------------------------+

    This is after the example table.

The extra width of the table that results from the "expand" option is
distributed amongst all of the columns more or less evenly, leaving
none at a natural size.

I'd like to see something like this for the table:

    +----+----+-------------------------------------------------+
    | 42 | 23 | This is a paragraph in a table.  Hopefully it   |
    |    |    | will be long enough to serve as a useful        |
    |    |    | example.                                        |
    +----+----+-------------------------------------------------+

as a result of something like 

    .TS
    allbox, tab(#), expandcolumn;
    C C Lx.
    ...

Where the hypothetical "expandcolumn" and the "x" modifier indicate
that the table is to be expanded to the current line width, the first
two columns (without a modifier) take their natural width, and the
column marked with the hypothetical "x" modifier expands to absorb the
extra width of the table.

(I'm not familiar with the internals of tbl and I don't know if it can
reasonably be coerced into doing this.)
-- 
T. Kurt Bond, address@hidden