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From: beverly@ai.cs.wisc.edu (Beverly Seavey (-Kung))
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: need help with vertical spanning in DITROFF tables
Message-ID: <11739@spool.cs.wisc.edu>
Date: 16 Nov 90 16:51:48 GMT
Sender: news@spool.cs.wisc.edu
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 45


 I am trying to create a table using ditroff and tbl. The last column
 has a block of text. I want the entries in the other columns, which
 each occupy one line only to be centered up and down   relative to the block of text:


	  ____________________________________________________
	  |     |     |     |     | Lots of text here, which  |
	  |  x  |  y  |  z  |  w  | happens to run on for     |
	  |_____|_____|_____|_____|_three lines...____________|
	  |     |     |     |     | Second entry in this field|
	  |  a  |  b  |  c  |  d  | I couldn't draw both text |
	  |_____|_____|_____|_____|_draw_both_text_and_dashes_|


	If for these line I have      :

	a a a a a.
	_
   	 \t \t \t \t T{     /* space-tab-space-tab...*/
    .na
	Lots of text here, which happens to run on for three lines...
	T}
	_
	x\ty\tz\tw\t\^     /* x y z w , pull down text from 1st line */
	 \t \t \t \t \^  /* space-tab-space-tab... pull down text from 1st line */ 
 .....and so on....  .


Instead,for the 1st row I get what looks like:

	 _______________________________________________________
	|     |     |     |     | Lots of text, which happens  |
        |     |     |     |     | to run one, for              |
        |     |     |     |     | three lines...               |
        |  x  |  y  |  z  |  w  |                              |
        |_____|_____|_____|_____|______________________________|

i.e., the formatter waits until after the text field has taken up its 3
lines before even starting the 2nd row for the other fields.
As far as I can tell, this is analogous to the "Interesting places"
example in Unix TBL documentation.
Just for kicks, I tried putting the text as the first column. THat didn't
help either. Am I doing something wrong or is our tbl not the same as the
one documented?