groff: Leaders
5.12.1 Leaders
--------------
Sometimes it is desirable to fill a tab stop with a given glyph, but
also use tab stops normally on the same output line. An example is a
table of contents entry that uses dots to bridge the entry name with its
page number, which is itself aligned between tab stops. The 'roff'
Leaders-Footnote-1::)
A leader character (ISO and EBCDIC code point 1, also known as SOH or
"start of heading"), behaves similarly to a tab character: it moves to
the next tab stop. The difference is that for this movement, the
default fill character is a period '.'.
-- Escape sequence: \a
Interpolate a leader in copy mode; see ⇒Copy Mode.
-- Request: .lc [c]
Set the leader repetition character to the ordinary or special
character C. Recall ⇒Tabs and Leaders: when encountering a
leader character in the input, the formatter writes as many dots
'.' as are necessary until reaching the next tab stop; this is the
"leader definition character". Omitting C unsets the leader
character. With no argument, GNU 'troff' treats leaders the same
as tabs. The leader repetition character is associated with the
environment (⇒Environments). Only a single C is recognized;
any excess is ignored.
A table of contents, for example, may define tab stops after a
section number, a title, and a gap to be filled with leader dots. The
page number follows the leader, after a right-aligned final tab stop
wide enough to house the largest page number occurring in the document.
.ds entry1 19.\tThe Prophet\a\t98
.ds entry2 20.\tAll Astir\a\t101
.ta .5i 4.5i +.5iR
.nf
\*[entry1]
\*[entry2]
=> 19. The Prophet............................. 98
=> 20. All Astir............................... 101
Info Catalog
groff: Tabs and Fields
groff: Tabs and Fields
groff: Fields