Werner LEMBERG <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hmm. While GNU tbl's output is debatable -- it is not documented > whether minimum width values should be used if a text block span > contains at least one column *without* a minimum width -- I think that > heirloom's output is really buggy. Even for a table specification > like > > lw(3n) lw(9n) lw(3n) > l s l. > > heirloom tbl only applies the first column width to the whole text > block span. This essentially prevents the use of text block spans, so > I doubt that you should take care of `unexpected changes in existing > documents'.
It is always possible to have an explicit .ll in the text block, though. This is also what Lesk's tbl manual advises: | If no line length is specified in the block of text itself, | or in the table format, the default is to use LxC/(N+1) where | L is the current line length, C is the number of table columns | spanned by the text, and N is the total number of columns in | the table. Because this rule is too simplistic for most cases, Bell Labs tbl requires a .ll for most text blocks anyway. The problem here is that tbl puts a text block into a formatted diversion before the actual column widths have been computed, so it can only guess what they are. Gunnar
