Newbie Q: Layout of table (or should I use Diag?)

[Mark Summerfield]

I'm new to Lout so please help (or ignore) rather than flame if I'm being 
stupid!

I'm trying to produce a book that is a catalogue of software prices for 
education. I've exported the data I need and have written a perl script to 
parse the data and output lout - one little table for each record. 

I have two problems:

1. Lout only extends the width as far as it needs - and I can't seem to 
   override. Neither @HExpand, nor @HAdjust work - they just give assertion 
   errors f < 0.1 ?

2. When I try to put some spacing between tables, e.g. @LLP, I get 
   assertion errors.

Am I taking the wrong approach - should I be using Diag to draw what I want?

One of the pluses of Lout is that if a line is too long it automatically 
scales down the font to make it fit - exactly what I want.

I'm using Lout 3.10 on Debian Linux.

Here's what I'm after:

PRODUCT_NAME___________________________ SUPPLIER_NAME_________________
DESC__________________________________________________________________
TEL___________________ EMAIL_________________ WEB_____________________
RRP___________________ ED.RRP________________ ED.SITE LIC_____________

I want the whole lot in a @CurveBox and the first line in a @CurveBox paint 
{ lightgrey }


I forgot to bring a copy of the lout my perl script produces - I'll send 
that tomorrow unless someone tells me the lout I should use before then!

>From memory (so it may not be syntactically correct) it looks like this:

@CurveBox { ragged 0.9vx } @Break @Tab
        @Fmta { @Col X @Over A,B,C }
        @Fmtb { @Col A ! @Col B ! @Col C }
{
        @Rowa X @CurveBox paint { lightgrey }
              { @B { Product1 } @Right { Supplier1 } } 
        @Rowa X { Description1 }
        @Rowa A { @B { Tel }{~Phone1} }
              B { @B { Email }{~Email1} }
              C { @B { Web }{~Web1} }
        @Rowa A { @B { RRP }{~RRP1} }
              B { @B { Ed. RRP }{~EdRRP1} }
              C { @B { Ed. Site Licence }{~EdSiteLic1} }
}

Note that my perl script converts any lout in the data like @ to "@" or 
" to address@hidden quotedbl} and so forth, so I don't believe I'm getting 
spurious 
lout commands - and without the @HExpand and @HAdjust I get no errors and 
get perfectly good postscript - but not to the full width of course.

Note that I've tried putting in @HExpand and @HAdjust with no luck!

Thanks very much in advance.

Regards.

PS If anyone wants a quick & dirty perl2lout converter that will set your 
Perl rather nicely, drop me a line and I'll send it to you. Its written in 
perl 5.004.
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