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Path: utzoo!utcsri!garfield!terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad)
From: terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad)
Newsgroups: net.text
Subject: tabs in troff
Message-ID: <3818@garfield.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 18:02:52 EDT
Article-I.D.: garfield.3818
Posted: Wed Oct  9 18:02:52 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 22:24:03 EDT
Sender: news@garfield.UUCP
Reply-To: terry@nrcvax.UUCP (Terry Grevstad)
Organization: Memorial U. of Nfld. C.S. Dept., St. John's
Lines: 39


For those of you out there who seem to have had the same problems that
I did in getting tabs to work in troff, I found a nifty little
solution.  

Putting tabs into a macro makes the "\t" command work, but sometimes
putting things into macro form is more hassle than it's worth.  SO...

define a string as the "\t" command.  It works just fine.  I did it
like this:

               .nf
               .ta 1i 3i 5i
               .tc 
               .ds T \t
               \*TThe\*Ttabs\*Twork
               \*Tjust\*Tfine\*Tnow

and, if you have a terminal with programmable keys, you can program
your \*T into one of the keys and use it instead of a tab key.

I don't know why tabs per se won't work for me.  Maybe my terminal
just doesn't create the appropriate tab character (Wyse 75), maybe
"vi" doesn't.  But they *DON'T* work, so don't bother flaming me 
and insisting they *DO* work.  I'm just happy I've discovered a 
relatively painless way to get the output I want.

And, since I'm obviously not the only person with this problem by the
amount of mail I received regarding my original posting, I thought I
would pass along what I have learned.

-- 
\"\t\f1A\h'+1m'\f4\(mo\h'+1m'\f1the\h'+1m'\f4\(es\t\f1\c
_______________________________________________________________________

                                                       Terry Grevstad
                                         Network Research Corporation
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