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From: npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: In troff, is "|" supposed to be slanted in Italic?
Summary: Why tbl doesn't use \D.
Message-ID: <1991May10.164756.22896@cbnewsl.att.com>
Date: 10 May 91 16:47:56 GMT
References: <1470@ecicrl.ocunix.on.ca> <1991May6.152022.28260@cbnewsl.att.com> <1991May8.190648.3769@eci386.uucp>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories
Lines: 11



Greg Woods suggests that if tbl used line drawing functions
we wouldn't have alignment problems in the post-processors.
True for troff, but, alas, there are still nroff users around.
In fact, since man(1) uses nroff, there's probably more nroff
use than troff use. Line drawing is not easy on a tty.
Were it not for this we would gladly draw boxes around tables
via line drawing. Similar issue for square roots, multi-line
brackets in eqn, though I can't imagine there are too many
Model 37 Teletype owners using neqn left in the world.