Re: [Groff] making tbl created tables fit on the paper

[Larry Kollar]

Nick Stoughton wrote:
 
> I've had similar problems with long tables, particularly where a column
> is longer than a page ... that is, there are too many lines between
> T{ and }T to fit this column on a single page. In this case, tbl says 
> 
> warning: page 236: table text block will not fit on one page

FrameMaker can't break a tall row across pages either. One of the very few 
things Word does better.

> In my case, I was able to work-around this by using mm's .MC to switch
> to multi-column mode, since the tbl actually just contained several
> columns of text. With this, you can also use .NCOL to move to the next
> column, but beware this doesn't solve many of the problems ... a column
> that reaches the end of the page will cause a move to the next column,
> so if it matters which column particular text lands in, then this isn't
> necessarily the best answer!

Way back when I was writing documentation using a troff clone ("trol", a 
homegrown clone that ran on VAX/VMS and printed to a LaserJet), I wrote a 
set of macros to handle tables. It was smart enough to break tall rows across 
pages, although it was hardly a general table solution. Perhaps the hdtbl 
macros can do this?


> Width related problems usually result in the message:
> 
> stdin:9597: warning [p 331, 3.0i, div `3tbd4,5', 0.3i]: can't break line
> 
> The already suggested approaches of reducing the inter-column spacing,
> reduced inter-word spacing, etc are usually the best bets, and switching
> to landscape also helps if the table is on a page by itself. 

It's also helpful to turn off full justification inside tables. The 
hack^H^H^H^H 
extension I use for ms includes the following:

.am @TS
.ad l
..
.am TE
.ad b
..

That gets rid of nearly all the "can't break line" warnings for me.

-- Larry