Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cs.utexas.edu!milano!bigtex!texbell!merch!gdb
From: gdb@merch.TANDY.COM (David Butler)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: HELP! with boxed tables using MM, tbl
Summary: I have seen it and it is an MM bug
Keywords: MM tbl
Message-ID: <17608@merch.TANDY.COM>
Date: 14 Feb 89 04:31:16 GMT
References: <946@mtuxj.att.com> <1085@hsi.UUCP>
Reply-To: gdb@merch.TANDY.COM (David Butler)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Radio Shack Computer Merchandising, Fort Worth, Texas
Lines: 38

In article <946@mtuxj.att.com>, btwomey@mtuxj.att.com (XF3AA-W.TWOMEY) writes:
> 
> I'm trying to create multi-page boxed tables using tbl and mm and troff.
> I'm using .TS H and .TH to get the header repeated on pages.

So far so good..

> 
> MM has problems though.

That is an understatement...

After fighting MM with this stuff I wrote my own macros to handle
multi-page tbls correctly.  The reason I did my own was MM was to
complicated to fix the problem.  Now that I have it working in my
macros I have thought to fix it in MM but have not done it yet.

The main problem is that MM tries to fudge the bottem of the page
with a .sp -1v when a .TS H is running.  WRONG.  The only way I
could get it to work correctly is at the footer trap do the following:

move the footer out of the way (rename it)
move absolutely to the place where you wanted the footer to start.
Tell the tbl drawing macro to draw the horizontal and vertical lines.
put the footer back (name it back)
Do the normal footer stuff.

I'm in the process of adding footnotes and real multi column (>2) with
vertical justification (no more down the bottom of the first column with
just a little bit in the second.  Fills both (or more) down to an even
bottom).  As soon as I finish this I thought I would post it.  It doesn't
have all of MM's header number stuff, but I never use that in the
"desktop publishing" type stuff we do.

For reference we use DWB 2.0 on a Tandy 6000 and a Tandy LP1000.

David Butler
gdb@merch.TANDY.COM