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Re: [Groff] CVS diff for tbl expanded column enhancement
From: |
Werner LEMBERG |
Subject: |
Re: [Groff] CVS diff for tbl expanded column enhancement |
Date: |
Wed, 15 Oct 2008 08:46:41 +0200 (CEST) |
> This is the description of that feature (trivially modified).
>
> "A key letter may be followed by the letter "x" or "X" to indicate
> an expanded column. If the modifier is used, the width of the
> corresponding column will be increased to use the remainder of the
> line length after the widths of the other columns have been
> calculated. This feature is useful for a column containing text
> blocks where it is desired to make the column as wide as possible
> without exceeding the line length. Only one expanded-width column
> is permitted for each table, so this modifier is limited to a single
> column in each table."
Steven,
I want to generalize your code so that multiple `x' modifiers are
allowed. Additionally, Eric Raymond has already contributed
experimental code to evenly distribute all available space for blocks
(which partly collides with your patch, but probably gives a better
point to start with my intended implementation).
To do that, I need some more information, and since I don't have a DWB
tbl binary which supports the `x' modifier, I ask you to conduct some
experiments.
. How does `x' interact with `w' and `e'? Theoretically, tbl must
not allow `e' and `x' at the same time; IMHO, the default action
should be that a warning gets emitted, and `x' overrides `e'. The
same for `w' in case the width value caused by `x' is smaller.
However, I'm unsure whether `x' should really be stronger than
`w'.
. What happens if the global `expand' option is used together with
`x'? Is there a difference in behaviour? I can imagine that `x'
has no effect whatsoever if `expand' isn't active. On the other
hand, what happens if a table is wider than the current line
length?
Werner