Re: Tables

[Jeff Kingston]

> I'm having a little trouble with Lout dropping tables.  It appears
> that if lout can't fit the page, it just drops it.

Not sure about the absence of error messages.  Lout should be able
to break tables over multiple pages, but the trick is to put them
directly into the body text, not into displays and list items:

    dum de dum
    @DP
    @Tbl ... gigantic table
    @DP

should split the table over multiple pages; or if the table is in
a @Figure or @Table symbol, the same.

> Second, is there a program [that] keeps running lout until it no
> longer need to be run?

No.  But for your particular large job you should be able to work
out how many runs it takes, and just run it that many times.

> is there a way of getting a header or footer to repeat on
> each multi-page or multi-column table?

You could try playing with the @Enclose parameter of @Figure and
@Table, but basically no.

> Thirdly, is there a way to force the end of the table to keep the         
> caption.

No.  I'm not sure what this would mean anyway - what if there is no
enough room on any one page for both the table and the caption?

> How do you force figure and tables to be placed before starting a new
> chapter?

I thought I fixed that one - are you using Version 3.17?  But perhaps
my memory is faulty.  You can work around the problem by placing a
@NP symbol at the end of the last section (or subsection or whatever)
of the chapter, or by moving the table's anchor point to earlier in
the document.  I admit these solutions might not be easy to use when
you are generating Lout source automatically.

Jeff