Re: [Groff] tbl - extended format specification

[Gaius Mulley]

Heinz-Jürgen Oertel <address@hidden> writes:

> Am Samstag, 14. Juni 2003 13:41 schrieb Werner LEMBERG:
> > > Or may be better, the possibility to call a user defined macro at
> > > the begining of each table entry?
> >
> > Do you want to implement it?
> >
> 
> OK, it seems to be easy to implement. Looks like this addition to tbl(1)
> 
> Extending the gnu-tbl format specifcation
> (added to the column key letters)
> 
> m,M 
>  Either of these specifiers may be followed by a macro name 
>  (either one or two characters long), or long name in parentheses
>  (the last form is a GNU tbl extension).
>  A one-letter macro name must be separated by one or more blanks
>  from whatever follows.
>  The macro which name can be specifies here must be defined before 
>  creating the table and is called just before the tables cell text is 
>  output. 
>  As implemented now, this macro is only called when block input is used,
>  that is text between T{ and T}.
>  The macro should contain only simple troff requests to change the text block
>  formatting, like text adjustment, hyphenation, size or font.
>  The macro is called _after_ other cell modifications like b,f or v
>  are output. Thus the macro can overwrite other modifiaction
>  specifiers.

without wanting to dampen any enthusiasm I wonder whether a letter other than
'm' and 'M' might be chosen, as 'm' would be the obvious choice for color in
tbl. [To match the \m[] and \M[] troff escapes]. Although admittedly 'm' is a
natural choice for macro in tbl.. hmm..

Gaius