Which font are you using?
With all mono-spaced (fixed-width) fonts everything works fine. The problem
occurs just with  variable spaced fonts.

Btw I noted that the fix is not perfect: the table at the end of man(1) is
misaligned, with or without the fix. Even without calling col at all.

This could be due to troff assuming fixed with font and inserting spaces
instead of tabs. And its a pity, because  probably libframe would align
tabs properly.

But this is just a guess, I had no time to check the troff code for this
second issue.

Giacomo
Il 05/Mar/2015 15:23 "erik quanstrom" <quanstro@quanstro.net> ha scritto:

> > Interestingly enough the problem disappears with a mono font.
> >
> > I suspect that troff is inserting such tabs instead of spaces when it
> > thinks they are the same. Indeed libframe (as far I could understand from
> > the manual and the sources) properly handles such variable width fonts.
> >
> > Looks like I've to inform troff about the glyphs sizes... but how?
>
> i don't use a mono font so i don't like your col -x solution, and this
> works for me regardless.
>
> if $font is set correctly, i believe all this should work out.  make sure
> that $tabstop=acme tabstop as well.  the default for acme is 4, but
> it is imported by $tabstop, and overridden with Tab.
>
> cpu'ing can screw with your $font.
>
> - erik
>
>