Re: [Groff] tbl and inter-column spacing

[Joerg van den Hoff]

On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 04:52:21PM +0200, Joerg van den Hoff wrote:
> hi,
> 
> I  have  not  used  `tbl'   for  some  time  and now see the
> following behaviour, which was not present before, I'm quite
> sure:
> 
> the  inter-column  space  seems  to be zero, i.e. in a table
> with all left centered columns the longest entry (max. width
> entry,  I  mean)  in  each column "touches" the neighbouring
> entry in the same row (in the next column),  i.e.  it  looks
> something like this, for instance:
> 
> ------
> a  b
> foobar
> ------
> 
> if  column  1 has entries 'a' and 'foo' and column 2 'b' and
> 'bar'.  which sure it should not.
> 
> I was not lucky in the docs and the mail archive. so:
> 
> question  1:  is  there  a  way  to specify the inter-column
> spacing (minimal distance between end of some entry and next
> entry in the same row)? a register I should know of, e.g.?
> 
> question  2:  I have'nt seen this behaviour in the past. how
> come?  has there been a change of default behaviour or am  I
> doing something wrong which only surfaced now?
> 
> 
> joerg
> 
> 
> PS: I'm using `tbl' in conjunction with the `ms' macros and
> groff version 1.19.3 under MacOS.
> 
> 
> 

oophs...
according to Murphy's law, I always discover something _after_ hitting
"send": my problem seems simply to be caused by mismatch between table
width and line length: the table in question was extending farther to
the right than it should. so quickly forget about my previous mail as
far as apparent misbehaviour of `tbl' is concerned. sorry for the noise.

but  I  still  would appreciate to get some hint how to tune
the inter-column spacing.

and it's still funny: the table is rendered completely (but extending
into the right margin), only the inter-column space is squeezed to zero,
it seems. now: is _this_ intended behaviour? should one not get some
kind of warning ("table to wide" or something like that)?

joerg