tables, and PDF files contain LoutBox

[Michael_C_Crom]

I'm sorry if this is the wrong forum -- I'm new to lout!

I'm using lout to create some large tables.
Notably, these are in Letter format, landscape orientation,
and have about 20 columns.
Not only that, but each 'row' is made up of 4 rows,
so the format is something like 20 columns of data,
followed by 3 rows that span the previous columns.

I have 2 problems.  First, depending on the default font
size, I may get a page with only the header, then a page
with the header and the table, then another page with only
the header.  If I reduce the font size, I still get
the 'object horizontally scaled by factor' message (and
I do want lout to scale the data to fit), but as I reduce
the font, eventually the 'blank' pages are no longer
produced.  This seems to be lout mis-calculating the
size of the table and producing blank pages.
I can work around this by simply using the the smaller font size,
but it would be nice to not have to do that!

The other problem I'm having is that when I use the -Z option
to product PDF, lout seems to insert a function call into
the PDF file called 'LoutBox', no doubt to draw the rules
around the table.  The file is readable by acroread, but no
rules are shown.

Does anyone have some ideas on these issues?
Thanks in advance!


Mike Crom
address@hidden