Newsgroups: comp.text
Path: utzoo!sq!lee
From: lee@sq.sq.com (Liam R. E. Quin)
Subject: Re: Typesetting Tables on the UNIX system
Message-ID: <1990Sep25.153804.27570@sq.sq.com>
Keywords: UNIX tbl typesetting troff
Organization: SoftQuad Inc.
References: <3863@gara.une.oz.au>
Date: Tue, 25 Sep 90 15:38:04 GMT
Lines: 45

[sorry if you see this twice -- we seem to have a C-news config error...]

ascott@gara.une.oz.au (Tony Scott STPG) writes:
> I have recieved unsolicited a flyer concerning a book about
>typesetting tables within the UNIX system.
>
>I would like to know if [the publisher] is a reputable one and if anyone
>has actually seen the book concerned. The Title is the title of this mail.

I have a copy of the book.  It's by Henry McGilton and Mary McNabb.
It's also by far the best reference on tbl I have ever seen.  Now, you
might well wonder whether you _want_ some 280+ pages about typesetting
tables, but if this is something you do, the book certainly seems worth it
to me.  I might even go so far as to say that most troff users should at
least have access to a copy.

There are lots of well-thought-out examples, and the book gets as complex as
tables that include diagrams generated with pic and eqn (and diagrams with
tables within them), but does so very gently.

If I were to make a single criticism of the book, it would be that perhaps
it goes a little _too_ gently in places, but I've been using nroff/troff/tbl
for some eight or more years now, so perhaps that's unfair.  Oh, and it
doesn't talk very much about the proprietary versions (Elan, SoftQuad,
Xroff, etc) of DWB very much.  But I'm a little biased there :-)

The full address is
    Trilithon Press,
    333 State Street, Suite 106,
    Los Altos,
    California 94022
and the price in the order form at the back of the book is $20 per copy, with
$2.40 shipping and handling, although I expect that your local bookshop could
order it just as easily.  The ISBN is 0-9626289-0-5 and it's dated 1990.

I have no connection with Trilithon Press, if anyone cares.

Lee

-- 
Liam R. E. Quin,  lee@sq.com, SoftQuad Inc., Toronto, +1 (416) 963-8337
"[...] you cannot sustain adult, probing, meaningful drama when the proceedings
 are interrupted every twelve minutes by a dozen dancing rabbits with toilet
paper."  [Melinda Snodgrass, quoted by Evelyn C. Leeper]