[comp.sys.next] tbl bug on next?

rit@killdeer.Stanford.EDU (Jean-Francois Rit) (05/03/91)

There seems to be a problem with tbl on the 2.1 next extended release.

man tbl

generates an error because there happen to be a line beginning with
.TS  in tbl.1 without intention to make a table (like in this
sentence).

That can be fixed, but then comes the *real problem*: when you do man
tbl you get the error message:

line 50 no specification.

You can get this error directly by trying, say,

man mf

which returns 

line 124 no specification.

Has anybody got this to work on a next?
Do roff experts have a clue on what could be wrong? (The man page or
the doc "Tbl a program to format tables" by M E Lesk don't give a
clue...)

yours,

J-F Rit

npn@cbnewsl.att.com (nils-peter.nelson) (05/03/91)

Correspondent says there's a tbl bug because man got
confused by a .TS at the start of a line.  man filters
through tbl and eqn, because some man pages need these.
Anything with .TS or .EQ at the start of a line is
significant. If these were intended as plain text they
should have been preceded by .li, or a blank or tab,
or the control character should have been changed.
tbl is evidently complaining the line after .TS doesn't
look like a table specification. Error is by the person
who wrote the man page.