[texhax] Table caption in bold "Table 3: blah blah"

[Karl Berry]

    \renewcommand{\tablename}{\textbf{Table}}% Forces Table into bold
    Does the first bit right but how do I get the Table number in bold?

I concur with the other responses that using the caption package (and I
bet there are other packages too) is the best idea.  But if for some
reason you cannot or do not want to do that, with some trepidation, I
will post what we do in tugboat.dtx:

\def\fnum at figure{{\small \bf \figurename\nobreakspace\thefigure}}
\def\fnum at table{{\small \bf \tablename\nobreakspace\thetable}}

(We make further changes in \@makecaption to propagate the \small size,
but anyway ...)

Best,
karl

P.S. To use the above, you have to be in a context where @ is a letter.
If you didn't already know that, or don't know what that means, please
ignore this post entirely :).