Re: [Groff] conditionals inside a table?

[Ted Harding]

And I would add to this that 'tbl' does not interpret troff requests
(if it sees any in the 'tbl' contents, after the initial formatting
setup, then it simply passes them through to the next link in the chain).

In fact, what 'tbl' does not like in Anton's attempt at .ie/.el is
the fact that it interprets his initial "." as the terminator for
the format line (though the ones in the "w(0.5i)" etc. are protected
because they are within "w(  )" which tbl does interpret); and then
it is not the last character.

Or indeed a top-level ".". anywhere in the format line.

Example: I have a document with a table which works perfectly. The
start of the table is:
  .TS
  tab(#);
  n1 n1 n1 n.

As a test, I changed this to
  .TS
  tab(#);
  .n1 n1 n1 n.
and got the very same message: "`.' not last character on line".

And the same if I insert it anywhere else in the line -- even:
  .TS
  tab(#);
  n1 n1 n1 n..

Hoping thus helps to clarify!
Ted.

On 04-Dec-2014 16:30:06 Mike Bianchi wrote:
> The issue is that  tbl  processes the entire file before  groff  sees it.
> The data follow is typically
>       tbl <inputfile  |  groff ...
> 
> Can you express your column widths in  en  units?
> 
> From tbl(1) ...
>        w,W    Minimal column width value.   Must be followed either by a
>               troff(1) width expression in parentheses or a unitless integer.
>               If no unit is given,  en  units are used.  Also used as the
>               default line length for included text blocks.  If used multiple
>               times to specify the width for a particular column, the last
>               entry takes effect.
> 
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 04, 2014 at 07:57:50AM -0800, Anton Shterenlikht wrote:
>> I want to make a document that can give good
>> ascii and Postscript results. I found that I need
>> to adjust the formating of tables. I'm trying to
>> to this with .ie/.el like this:
>> 
>>    10   .TS H
>>    11   expand,center;
>>    12   .ie t lw(0.5i) lw(0.01i) lw(0.5i) lw(2.5i) lw(1.4i).
>>    13   .el lw(1i) lw(0.2i) lw(1i) lw(5i) lw(3i).
>> 
>> However, it seems tbl doesn't understand this:
>> 
>> tbl:wish.1:12: `.' not last character on line
>> tbl:wish.1:12: giving up on this table
>> 
>> Please advise
>> 
>> Thanks
>> 
>> Anton
>> 
> 
> -- 
>  Mike Bianchi
>  Foveal Systems
> 
>  973 822-2085
> 
>  address@hidden
>  http://www.AutoAuditorium.com
>  http://www.FovealMounts.com
> 

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <address@hidden>
Date: 04-Dec-2014  Time: 17:22:46
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