Hi Ralph, > Yes, I don't think it can be done in portable troff as the current > positions aren't available to be saved.
I don't know anything about the man macros (not even usage ;) but if they use tabs on their own and use a variable for .ta as argument they could indeed save and restore the setting by defining .TS and .TE? I can understand if someone is a little bit disappointed that tbl silently changes the tab setting. Maybe the appropriate macro package could be improved a little bit. Or do you see a portability problem also? Cheers, Carsten
