ShowTable.pm, version 3.3, is a Perl 5 module which defines subroutines
to print arrays of data in a nicely formatted listing, using one of
four possible formats: simple table, boxed table, list style, and
HTML-formatting (for World-Wide-Web output).  See the documentation on
ShowTable.pm for details on the formatting.

The program "showtable" reads data in a variety of formats from a file
or STDIN, optimally columnizes the data, and then feeds the array of
data to the ShowTable module for display.  Showtable can parse its own
output as input (except for HTML).  Individual or ranges of columns may
be selected for display, either by name or by index.

In other words, showtable is a data formatting program.  Using the
'-html' option, showtable can accept ASCII tablular data and format it
appropriately for display through a Web-browser.

Both the the ShowTable.pm module and the showtable program have
embedded POD text with which man or HTML pages can be created.

For detailed usage information, you can do:

    pod2man ShowTable.pm | nroff -man 
    pod2man showtable    | nroff -man

The program and module are accompanied with a perl Makefile.PL, this
README, test programs (do "make test") and reference test output files, 
and the GNU License, under which this software is freely available.

The archive is available in the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN).

INSTALLATION:

1. Unpack the archive

    sh Data-ShowTable-3.1.shar

   or:

    gnutar xvfz Data-ShowTable-3.1.tar.gz

2. Generate the "Makefile":

    perl Makefile.PL

   Be sure that you are using perl 5.002 or later.

3. Make the installable files:

    make

4. Test the new files:

    make test

5. Install the modules and "showtable" program into the configured
   Perl library and binary directories.

    make install

Contributions or improvements are welcome.

___________________________________________________________
Alan Stebbens <aks@sgi.com>      http://reality.sgi.com/aks
