Conference vaxuum::document_ft

203.0. "When are spaces significant? Why?" by AUTHOR::WELLCOME (Steve) Mon Apr 06 1987 15:23

    When are spaces significant?  Why?  I tried putting spaces around
    backslashes separating elements in table rows, to make the
    individual columns easier to find while editing, and DOCUMNENT
    complained about the space after the \, that is,
    
    Column one stuff \ Column 2 stuff \ Column 3 stuff
    
    is not acceptable, but
    
    Column one stuff \Column 2 stuff \Column 3 stuff
    
    is okay.  Then I tried doing
    
    DEFINE_BOOK_TITLE(MAC_BOOK \PDP-11 Macro-11 Language Reference Manual)
    
    and DOCUMENT complained about the space before the backslash.
    
    Why do you have to be so picky about spaces in your syntax checking?
    Can't you just ignore them and take a little of the burden off the
    user?  After all, aren't computers supposed to be "intelligent"
    and "user-friendly" and all that good stuff?

    Don't know why <table_row> complains about spaces.
    
    I've put spaces in name arguments down as a wishlist item.
    (That is, I added the WISHLIST keyword to this note.)

    
    I semi-closed this NOTE a while back when Steve couldn't supply
    a file that showed a problem with spaces in table rows. I still
    can't find a problem in
    
    <table_row>( text \ text \ text )
    
    but there is a bad bug in:
    
    <table_setup>( n \ n \ n \ n)
    
    This is now fixed for V1.0, but if you have the error TBLCOLCNT
    and the numbers are numeric, remove the spaces around them.
    
    

    I may have had the problem in <table_setup> and assumed the
    problem existed with spaces in table rows as well - wouldn't be
    surprised.