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From: kak@hico2.UUCP (Kris A. Kugel)
Newsgroups: comp.text,comp.sys.att
Subject: nroff: tbl for a wide variety of environments
Keywords: tbl nroff troff
Message-ID: <1442@hico2.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 91 21:38:16 GMT
Reply-To: kak@hico2.westmark.com
Followup-To: poster
Organization: High Country Software
Lines: 36

I'm trying to think of a way to fix a document that uses tbl.

I'd like it to look as nice as possible
when printed with both nroff and troff.

I had it looking good with troff, but nroff had
a problem because some of the lines of the table were too long.

I tried fixing that by putting in the "T{"/"T}" constructs,
but then the troff output started looking bad -- lines that
fit fine before were broken into two (or more) lines unnecessarily.

I tried the "expand" option, but that just spread the broken lines
futher apart.

Since I don't know what fonts or page sizes this document will be
printed with, I have difficulty in setting a page width, or figuring
out a maximum column width.

So, what I want is:
	1. to fit the tbl entry on one line, if possible.
	2. to break up a column of the entry (if necessary)
	   in such a fashion as to use as much of the line
	   as possible.

Perhaps if I can specify the column width in ens -- but I wouldn't
bet that would work either.

Any suggestions?  Reply by mail . . .
(if enough people are interested in the suggestions, I'll post a summary)

                               Kris A. Kugel
                             ( 908 ) 842-2707
                          uunet!westmark!hico2!kak 
                        {daver,ditka,zorch}!hico2!kak
                      internet: kak@hico2.westmark.com