Re: tbl example - what should be fixed?

[Kristaps Dzonsons <kristaps@bsd.lv>]

> We have a lot of manpages having the similar looking tables:
> .TS
> tab(\a) box;
> cw(2.75i) |cw(2.75i)
> lw(2.75i) |lw(2.75i)
> .
> TYPE\aVALUE
> _
> Type1\aValue1
> _
> Type2\aValue2
> .TE
>
> Output of -Tlint:
> tbl.example:2:5: ERROR: skipping bad character: ignoring byte
> tbl.example:2:6: ERROR: bad table syntax
> tbl.example:3:12: ERROR: bad table layout
> tbl.example:4:12: ERROR: bad table layout
> tbl.example:6:15: ERROR: skipping bad character: ignoring byte
> tbl.example:6:4: ERROR: bad table layout
> tbl.example:8:4: ERROR: skipping bad character: ignoring byte
> tbl.example:8:2: ERROR: bad table layout
> tbl.example:10:20: ERROR: skipping bad character: ignoring byte
> tbl.example:10:1: ERROR: bad table layout
> tbl.example:1:1: ERROR: no table data cells specified
>
>
> My questions is, is there anything that could/should be fixed/improved
> in tbl parser, or all of the errors are 100% correct and should be fixed
> in the manpages?

Yuri,

 From mdoc.7:

LANGUAGE SYNTAX
      mdoc documents may contain only graphable 7-bit ASCII
      characters, the space character, and, in certain circumstances,
      the tab character.

The tbl.7 manuals says the same.  But you have non-ASCII characters in 
the input.  groff is probably letting you get away with this by simply 
reading through the binary to the ')', but mandoc throws away the binary 
characters before parsing.

Second, you did raise a bug!  I was looking for modifiers for the 
vertical bar, i.e., a|b -> error.  I just committed a fix for this.

The stand-alone period is another problem.  groff *should* ignore it by 
its own definition of a no-op macro.  But as it occurs in a tbl context, 
it's different?  Blje...  For now, just put the period on the same line 
as the last macro.

Thanks again,

Kristaps
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