Re: paragraphs inside tables

[Valery Ushakov]

On Fri, Jul 29, 2022 at 13:34:07 -0500, Daniel Ajoy wrote:

> Hello, I have the following file with default "doc" configuration. I
> notice that the @ParaGap paragraph gap spacing is not being enforced
> within cells of a table (image attached and in this link
> https://imgur.com/a/gfql5no )
>
> What can it do to enforce it?

My Lout is *very* rusty these days, so the explanation below might be
wrong.  Caveat emptor.

TL;DR: For a quick workaround use

  // @LP Text

instead of

  @LP Text


Now for a slightly longer version.  The reason for this is kinda hard
to explain without diving into galley comonent promotion and this kind
of advanced topics from doc/expert.ps (mostly swapped out of my
memory).  But, basically, when you write

  A bunch of ...
  ... text.
  @LP
  Some more text...

in the body text, then lout will first do paragraph breaking and then
each paragraph line is an object of its own right, and the @LP applies
to the last line of the previous paragraph and the first line of the
next.

But inside the table, very roughly speaking, each _paragraph_ is an
object, not individual lines, so @LP applies to whole paragraphs and
the horizontal mark of the previous paragraph is way at the top,
through its first line, so @ParaGap is smaller than that and you get
only a tiny extra gap between the bottom of the previous paragraph and
the top of the next.  An extra // adds an empty object and @ParaGap
will be applied to that, not to the previous paragraph so the gap will
be slightly bigger than the normal @LP.  You can instead use, say

  macro @TLP { //1fe } # fine tune appropriately

to specify edge-to-edge ("e") gap mode and use that inside the table
instead of @LP.  (Oh, and don't use it before the first "paragraph").

However you are still abusing @Tbl here.  If you apply the proposed
changes you will still run into the problem of stuffing way too much
text in each cell.  Lout can't make a single cell span across pages.

-uwe