[Groff] Re: another tbl peculiarity

[Werner LEMBERG]

> > Apparently, heirloom's tbl uses the minimum width of the first
> > column for the whole span.
> 
> I agree that this is not optimal, but I wouldn't alter the behavior
> without introducing additional options or such in order to avoid
> unexpected changes in existing documents.

Hmm.  While GNU tbl's output is debatable -- it is not documented
whether minimum width values should be used if a text block span
contains at least one column *without* a minimum width -- I think that
heirloom's output is really buggy.  Even for a table specification
like

  lw(3n) lw(9n) lw(3n)
  l      s      l.

heirloom tbl only applies the first column width to the whole text
block span.  This essentially prevents the use of text block spans, so
I doubt that you should take care of `unexpected changes in existing
documents'.

However, you've convinced me to not change GNU tbl's behaviour, so I
will just document it.


    Werner