In this and the next section, we present examples to help users
understand the basic workflow of hdtbl. First of all, you must
load the hdtbl.tmac file. As with nearly all other groff macro
packages, there are two possibilities to do so: Either add the
line
.mso hdtbl.tmac
to your roff file before using any macros of the hdtbl package,
or add the option
-m hdtbl
to the command line of groff (before the document file which
contains hdtbl macros). Then you can include on or more tables
in your document, where each one must be started and ended with
the .TBL and .ETB macros, respectively.
In this man page, we approximate the result of each example as
terminal ouput to be as generic as possible since hdtbl currently
only supports the ps and pdf output drivers.
The simplest well-formed table consists of just single calls to
the four base table macros in the right order. Here we construct
a table with only one cell.
.TBL
.TR
.TD
contents of the table cell
.ETB
A terminal representation is
+------------------------------------------------------+
| contents-of-the-table-cell |
+------------------------------------------------------+
Equivalent to the above is the following notation.
.TBL .TR .TD "contents of the table cell" .ETB
By default, the formatted table is inserted into the surrounding
text at the place of its definition. If the vertical space isn't
sufficient, it is placed at the top of the next page. Tables can
also be stored for later insertion.
Using 'row-number*column-number' as the data for the table cells,
a table with two rows and two columns can be written as
.TBL cols=2
. TR .TD 1*1 .TD 1*2
. TR .TD 2*1 .TD 2*2
.ETB
A terminal representation is
+--------------------------+---------------------------+
| 1*1 | 1*2 |
+--------------------------+---------------------------+
| 2*1 | 2*2 |
+--------------------------+---------------------------+
Here we see a difference from HTML tables: The number of columns
must be explicitly specified using the 'cols=m' argument (or
indirectly via the 'width' argument, see below).
The contents of a table cell is arbitrary; for example, it can be
another table, without restriction to the nesting depth. A given
table layout can be either constructed with suitably nested
tables or with proper arguments to .TD and .TH, controlling
column and row spanning. Note, however, that this table
.TBL
. TR
. TD
. nop 1*1 1*2
. TR
. TD
. TBL cols=2 border=
. TR
. TD
. nop 2*1
. TD
. nop 2*2
. ETB
.ETB
and this table
.TBL cols=2
. TR
. TD colspan=2
. nop 1*1 1*2
. TR
. TD
. nop 2*1
. TD
. nop 2*2
.ETB
are similar but not identical (the use of .nop is purely cosmetic
to get proper indentation).
The first table looks like
+------------------------------------------------------+
| 1*1 1*2 |
+------------------------------------------------------+
| |
| 2*1 2*2 |
| |
+------------------------------------------------------+
and the second one like
+------------------------------------------------------+
| 1*1 1*2 |
+---------------------------+--------------------------+
| 2*1 | 2*2 |
+---------------------------+--------------------------+
Here is the latter table in a more compact form.
.TBL cols=2 .TR ".TD colspan=2" 1*1 1*2
. TR .TD 2*1 .TD 2*2 .ETB
If a macro has one or more arguments (see below), and it is not
starting a line, everything belonging to this macro including the
macro itself must be enclosed in double quotes.
