Re: CVS commit: src/share/man/man9

[Alan Barrett <apb%cequrux.com@localhost>]

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Joerg Sonnenberger wrote:
> Knowing in advance the number of columns is important if you want to do
> proper markup for anything not tab-bound.

I see sense both in what you and Uwe are saying.  Could we resolve it
by adding a magic "-fill" argument to mark a final column that should
use up the remainder of the page width?  For example, for a three column
table in which the first two columns have fixed width and the last
column fills the remainder of the page, use

    .Bl -column "FIRST" "SECOND" -fill

If you just teach groff-mdoc to ignore the "-fill" argument, then I
think it will do the right thing.  You'd have to tech mdocml to handle
-fill explicitly.

This also leaves the door open for a future enhancement to allow "-fill"
somewhere other than the last column.

--apb (Alan Barrett)