Hi Thomas, At 2025-10-27T04:15:57-0400, Thomas Dickey wrote: > On Sun, Oct 26, 2025 at 10:26:27PM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote: > > What's wrong turns out to be straightforward, but not necessarily > > easy to fix. > > > > The problem is use of the 'x' column modifier in tbl(1) tables. > > Solaris 10 tbl rejects it and "tbl quits". > > > > Heirloom Doctools troff claims that 'x' is a GNU extension. It's > > not. But GNU tbl is probably how most people came to know of it, > > because I can't find a trace of it in any AT&T troff lineage except > > DWB 3.3. It's not in Research Tenth Edition Unix tbl nor Plan 9 tbl > > despite some cross-pollination that happened between DWB and > > Research troffs. > > > > I'm updating groff's tbl(1) page to clarify this point. > > > > The question for ncurses is what to do about it. It'll take me some > > time to ponder possibilities. > > If it's "only" the s/Lx/L/g, then that could be done with a configure > check for the special case of antique nroff, and a substitution for > make-sed.sh
That's true. In my opinion 'x' is too nice a feature to do without
unless one has to, so it's worth complicating your CF_MAN_PAGES Autoconf
macro to take care of it.
I have a little experience with Autoconf and m4 but it pales to yours.
If you'd prefer I worked on this, just say so. But if you'd prefer to
do it yourself, here's a macro for testing a tbl program for this
feature that's about as minimal as I can make it.
AC_DEFUN([TBL_SUPPORTS_X_COLUMN_MODIFIER], [
tbl_supports_x_column_modifier=no
AC_MSG_CHECKING([whether 'tbl' program supports 'x' column modifier])
if ! command -v tbl > /dev/null 2>&1
then
AC_MSG_ERROR(['tbl' not available.], 1)
fi
if printf '.TS\nLx.\ntable cell\n.TE\n' | tbl > /dev/null 2>&1
then
tbl_supports_x_column_modifier=yes
fi
AC_MSG_RESULT([$tbl_supports_x_column_modifier])
])
Regards,
Branden
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