[bug #59971] tbl: does not restore hyphenation after text blocks

[G. Branden Robinson]

URL:
  <https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?59971>

                 Summary: tbl: does not restore hyphenation after text blocks
                 Project: GNU troff
            Submitted by: gbranden
            Submitted on: Fri 29 Jan 2021 06:04:57 PM UTC
                Category: Preprocessor tbl
                Severity: 3 - Normal
              Item Group: Incorrect behaviour
                  Status: None
                 Privacy: Public
             Assigned to: gbranden
             Open/Closed: Open
         Discussion Lock: Any
         Planned Release: None

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Details:

Quoting myself in a recent email to the Linux man-pages project[1]:


Instead of bracketing a table with .na/.ad and .nh/.hy requests, one can
put .na and .nh requests in individual text blocks.  Better still, you
don't even have to remember to turn adjustment back on--tbl takes care
of that for you.

I wish I could say the same thing about hyphenation.  .nh does work, but
tbl forgets to turn hyphenation back on after the table.  This is a bug
with a long beard--both groff tbl and Heirloom Doctools tbl misbehave
this way, and due to the latter I suspect it of being true of Version 7
Unix tbl as well[3].  Lesk's 1979 tbl manual says nothing about it.  It
is hard to rationalize as a deliberate choice, given the behavior of
adjustment.  I just learned about this in the course of composing this
mail and it's my intention to fix it in groff for 1.23.0.

[...]

What about adjustment and hyphenation in table cells that aren't text
blocks?  The answer is simple--they don't happen.  Text blocks are
called that because tbl arranges for them to be laid out like miniature
pieces of the main document.  Ordinary table cells are handled using
roff's tab and field mechanisms, which don't enclose line breaks.  That
means they're not subject to hyphenation or adjustment.


I am therefore proposing this behavior change for symmetry with adjustment
handling in text blocks.

Attaching a bug demonstrator.



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File Attachments:


-------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri 29 Jan 2021 06:04:57 PM UTC  Name: man-table-na-nh.man  Size: 1KiB  
By: gbranden

<http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/download.php?file_id=50806>

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