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In article <289@future.ursa.UUCP> raj@ursa.UUCP (Raj) writes:
>tbl has a bug.  It manifests itself when you have a long table, spanning
>several pages, and there are numeric fields.  The first few pages of the
>table were alright, but the later pages have the problem.  The problem is
>that blank spaces in the table are replaced by the decimal part of the
>row above!  I have tried all kinds of ways and means to get around it.  The
>only possible way is to declare the column as alphanumeric rather than 
>numeric.  That makes the periods not aligned, and the whole thing looks ugly.


Assuming the operative word is "long." Maybe your problem is
distantly related to the fact that tbl only looks at the first
100-200 or so (sorry, I forget the exact number now, but it's
in the docs) lines of the raw file when it's working up the
format for the table.  

Have you tried breaking up your table into several smaller
ones?  Probably using the  ".TS H" capability provided by the
memorandum macros.  For all tables but the first one, use
the "N" in the ".TH" macro that you put in after your header
lines - so that, as each new table shows up, the header is
only output if the processor is at the TOP of a new page.

You'll have to specify column widths, tho, in each new
table, so that as you carry over from page to page
it all looks like one continuous table.  You may have some
problems if you're trying to box your table.

And don't forget to use -mm to format.  The carryover head
business is an -mm feature, not a tbl feature.


	.TS H
	<global options> ; 
	<column formats>.
	<header lines>
	.TH
	  .
	  .
	<table data>
	  .
	  .
	.TE
	.TS H
	<global options> ;    \" Same as globals for first table
	<column formats>.     \" Same as formats for first table
	<header lines>        \" Same as header lines for first table
	.TH N                 \" 'N' added to suppress output of 
	  .                   \"    header lines unless top of page
	  .
	<table data>
	  .
	  .
	.TE




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