Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>>> The only problem with using w is that the number that needs to go to
>>> go next to it is brittle -- it may break if the table indent
>>> changes, or if the the point size changes, or if the margins change.
>>
>> I fully agree. It can make such man pages ugly to read.
>
> This I don't understand. Ugly to read for whom? If w is chosen well
> for the indent and point size, it will look as though the table was
> filled to right margin by a smart algorithm.
What might work for nroff might not work for troff -- and then there are
things like -rS11 for people who want a little larger type. I'm fond of saying
that manpages are the first widespread example of single-sourced
documentation -- and you can't make many assumptions about how people
want to display single-sourced documents.
Outside of manpages, I'd personally welcome the percentage width unit and
"expand to fill the line" extensions in tbl -- my primary output targets are
PDF and HTML, and these extensions would work well for my documentation.
I just don't think they'd be quite as good in manpages. I took a stab at coding
them myself a while back, but couldn't get my head around the source.
>> I still think that tables with T{...T} don't work well within man
>> pages. Instead, .TP and TQ should be used, as demonstrated in the
>> attached file.
>
> Yes? And what do we do if the table has more than two columns?
You might want to have a look at groff_ms(7). I put a lot of effort into making
those tables work well for both console & print, and didn't use w at all.
-- Larry
