On 30-Jul-11 06:08:55, Heinz-Jürgen Oertel wrote: > Am Samstag 30 Juli 2011 schrieb Deri James: > >> I think this could be because tbl needs to know the max width of each >> column >> before starting to output, so when considering the first column it >> will have to >> examine the width of \*[lmn] foreach row that you use it on. So these >> six >> accesses to get the width trigger the increment before it starts to >> output the >> first row. > > Hello, > this is my assumption as well. > As a work around in such cases, we define the number register in the > first row. > > .ds lmn \Z'\v'-1.5m'\h'-\w'\\n+[lmno]\0\0\0\0\0'u'\\n[lmno]' > .TS H > expand tab(#); > ce cw(2.0i) ce. > Name (in Capitals)#Address#Signature > _ > .TH > .T& >|l |l |l|. > .nr lmno -0 1 > \*[lmn] > _ > \*[lmn] > _ > \*[lmn] > _ > \*[lmn] > _ > \*[lmn] > \*[lmn] > _ > .TE > > regards > Heinz
Thank you, Derio and Heinz. You are both correct. In fact I had made a mistake last night (it was getting late, and my caffeinaemia levels were low), and I did not capture all of the output of 'pic' in that test example, but only the first part (see below). (I had left off thre ".TE" in copying the code into 'pic'. In fact, 'pic' goes through the table twice, generating output in two parts. In the first part, it outputs number register definitions in terms of widths which troff will evaluate using "\w'...'". This will be done for each line of the table. In the second part, it outputs printing commands to troff using the registers it has defined in the first part, again for each line of the table. As a result, an incrementing register will be incremented by troff during the first part, for column width evaluation, and again during the second part, for printing. As Heinz points out, the cure is to define the number register in the first line of the table. I then got the following code for the example I posted: .vs 5m .ds lmn \Z'\v'-1.5m'\h'-\w'\\n+[lmno]\0\0\0\0\0'u'\\n[lmno]' .nr lmno 0 1 .nr FM \n[FM]+5m .TS H expand tab(#); ce cw(2.0i) ce. Name (in Capitals)#Address#Signature _ .TH .T& |l |l |l|. .nr lmno 0 1 \*[lmn] _ \*[lmn] _ \*[lmn] _ \*[lmn] _ \*[lmn] _ \*[lmn] _ .TE which works perfectly. Greetings to all! (Caffeinaemia now rising ... ). Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.hard...@wlandres.net> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 30-Jul-11 Time: 09:58:38 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
