Re: [Groff] Tips & Tricks: Tables with abutting rules

[Ingo Schwarze]

Hi,

Werner LEMBERG wrote on Thu, Jul 07, 2011 at 02:01:04PM +0200:
> Ted Harding wrote:

>> There is no 'tbl' option which allows a "no space" to be set in this
>> context. However, there is a trick.  This is to use dummy columns at
>> the left and/or right, with associated zero column spacings.  [...]

> Very nice!  Could you convert this small tutorial into something which
> I can add to the tbl manpage?

Ugh.  This looks like an extremely ugly hack abusing tbl(1) in a way
it was never meant to be used.

In general, you are better off in programming if you avoid using
counter-intuitive quirks near the borders of languages (in this case,
empty columns and mixing low-level roff with high-level tbl).
In general, that kind of hackery will be hard to understand, of
questionable portability at best, and will likely break with the
next shift in implementation-defined behaviour.

Are you really sure that you want to *document* such stuff?
I think it would be a saner approach to clearly advise against
it instead of advertising it.

Yours,
  Ingo

-- 
Ingo Schwarze <address@hidden>
OpenBSD mandoc and groff maintainer