> also: i need "sed '/^$/q'" at the end of my filter because groff > renders a lot of empty lines at the end of the output whenever i > use b in my tbl format. i don't know how to remove it.
I don't understand how empty lines at the end can be related to making things bold (which is what "b" is supposed to do). I suspect it is because of page length, with groff outputting the empty part of an only partially filled page at the end. If that is the case, you can request a really long page with something like .pl 10000 at the very beginning (to prevent pagination during output of the table), but then at the end (after the table) say .pl 1 which will set the page length to just one line (so partially filled pages cannot exist). Then you can leave out the final sed command.
