Hi Chuck,

This is not a bug. What you (and Chris) are both missing is that the delivered xy_sys <chgrow> macro only takes two arguments - not three or more.

So you cannot just do <chgrow;fcell;20;8> (or <chgrow;fcell;20;8;0>) as <chgrow> will only do anything with the first two "fcell" and "20" arguments.

As far as your attempting to do <co;8><chgrow;pt;;20><co;0>, well that just does not work on a number of different levels.

• First, the <co;8> macro (if you typed correctly what you were doing) changes the foreground color to yellow, not the background color.
• Second, the <chgrow> macro is only going to do anything with the first "pt" argument and the second empty argument and not see the "20" argument (assuming you typed correctly what you were doing).
• Third, doing a color change (foreground or background) right before a <chgrow> and resetting it right after the <chgrow> is never going to work because what <chgrow> causes to happen in each cell will not "inherit" such a color change. The <chgrow> macro simply causes the specified macro (and one argument) to be output at the "beginning" of each cell in the row - but without any "inheritance" of other composition characteristics (e.g. color). It's just a simple way specify to output a (single argument) macro in each cell of a row.

Not sure the "best" way you want to get your desired results, but one option would be to do it with just a single <fcell> where you are currently placing the <chgrow> (i.e. in the first cell of the row) - use the value "table" for the width argument of <fcell> to apply the tint to the entire row (or technically "rest of the row" if you don't have the <fcell> in the first cell).

Another option is to define a custom macro that specifies most or all of the desired arguments to <fcell> and then use that in a <chgrow> macro. Your custom macro (to be used with <chgrow>) can have one argument to be able to variably specify at least one of the <fcell> arguments.

Or if you really are overly confident in your ability to type the correct number of semicolons:
<?fcell;20;8;;0;0;;;table;cell?>
(or something in that order)

The point that I am trying to make is that the chgrow macro is not the correct way to set patterns in a table.
A single fcell macro will do what you need.
And if you hate (like me) the semicolon jungle, you can split the fcell in any combination of fpat, ftype, fmcolor,....