[pracjourn-forum] Weird error with solution

[Peter Flynn]

Peter Flom wrote:
> I think someone on this list was collecting odd error messages.
> 
> Here's one.
> 
> Using booktabs, if you leave out the \\ in the line before \bottomrule
> you get
> 
> <<<
> 
> ] (present.vrb
> ! Misplaced \noalign.
> \bottomrule ->\noalign 
>                        {\ifnum 0=`}\fi \@aboverulesep =\aboverulesep
> \global...
> l.13     \bottomrule
>  >>>
> 
> which, at least to me, is not a model of clarity

That's excellent! Well found.

> and, if you type H you get
> <<<
> I expect to see \noalign only after the \cr of
> an alignment. Proceed, and I'll ignore this case.
> 
> which does little to actually help.

It's as clear as mud: \bottomrule needs to be at the start of a new
table row, because it uses \noalign (which can only work on whole
lines), but it doesn't check for that condition (it should). So if
there has been no \\, it fails. I don't know how to test for being
at the start of a new row, but I suspect it's possible. Perhaps you
could email the author (Simon Fear) and see if he can add the test.

Outside the TeX field, I came across a nice problem a few weeks ago,
although it's not an error message. Someone had booked their car for
its annual test, but the test centre wasn't able to honour the date,
so they said to cancel the appointment and make a new one on the web
site. In the screen where it asks for confirmation, it says

      Do you want to cancel this appointment?

               YES     NO     CANCEL

and of course "cancel" is the most prominent button :-)

///Peter