Can I do this in HTML?

Post #224,861

9/15/05 5:30:42 PM

What I want to do is have a simple text file (.html) that displays data in two columns, like so:

[ tried showing the layout here, but Zope stripped out the blank characters between the left group of Xs and the right group of Ns in my sample display]

The left column will always start in position 1, and I want the right column to always start in the 40th byte position (think Courier font on an IBM Selectric typewriter). I've tried using the html tab function, but it didn't work the way I had hoped. I then tried using the {pre} and {/pre} tags, but it altered the font, shrunk the text and put several blank lines between the lines of text. (I had to replace the greater than/less than characters with braces so the word "and" didn't come out on it's own line.) Maybe these tags are right but I need to add more formatting commands?

Been online for a few hours today, trying to find sites that can show me how to do this, but no luck yet. Anybody know how I can do this?

lincoln

"Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow

Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem.

[link|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net|contact me]

Post #224,863

by Another Scott

9/15/05 5:36:16 PM

People usually use tables for such things, I think.

[link|http://webtips.dan.info/tables.html|A linky on using tables].

HTH.

Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is no HTML expert.)

Post #224,967

by lincoln

9/16/05 9:18:27 AM

9/16/05 9:18:57 AM

Can you make a table with invisible borders?

A Table looks like it'll do what I want, except that I would prefer that the table structure be invisible, if that's possible.

I'll play around with some samples this morning to see how it looks and if it meets with the boss's approval.

Edited by lincoln Sept. 16, 2005, 09:18:57 AM EDT

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Post #224,968

by drewk

9/16/05 9:33:53 AM

Sure

a1	b1
a2	b2

That was done as:
<table border="0" cellpadding="5">
  <tr>
    <td>a1</td>
    <td>b1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
    <td>a2</td>
    <td>b2</td>
  </tr>
</table>

===

Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]

Post #224,902

by ben_tilly

9/15/05 8:47:12 PM

If you really want...

You should be able to use CSS to change the style of text in a pre tag.

Normally, of course, tables are The Right Approach. But if you want to quickly take a ton of pre-formatted text reports and throw them up, this is a doable approach.

An even worse trick is to create a table that has each character in its own cell. That allows you to do anything in the way of formatting. The only time that I've seen this done by anyone who was being serious was someone who was trying to create an HTML version of the Bloomberg screens. (It made development much faster to be able to actually see what it would look like without having to send code to Bloomberg. And Bloomberg screens play games with font and background color, so tables made a lot of sense.)

Cheers,
Ben

I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)

Post #224,949

by cforde

9/16/05 1:48:15 AM

something like this, maybe?

\n<style>\ntable.example   {   font-family: monospace; \n                    font-size : 12pt; \n                }\ntable.example td {  width: 40em;\n                    vertical-align: top;\n                }\n</style>\n\n<table class="example">\n    <tr>\n        <th>lyric</th>\n        <th>author</th>\n    </tr>\n    <tr>\n        <td>You got good manipulators,<br>\n            got your store of dupes,<br>\n            you got the idiot clamor and the lobby groups<br>\n            you like to play on fear, but people see through you\n        </td>\n        <td>Bruce Cockburn</td>\n    </tr>\n</table>\n

Hey, it's just what I happened to be listening to at the moment... :-)
Just put the html stuff in a file and load it in your favourite browser. I'd demonstrate the result here, but style and class attributes aren't allowed. :-(

Have fun,
Carl Forde

Post #224,960

by Ashton

9/16/05 3:21:53 AM

Hmmm

Cut / pasted this into Moz Composer.
(Had sorta wondered what that little icon might be good for, sometime.)

Saved-as [whatever.html]
Opened that file in a Moz tab:

Looked perzackly like the original as appears in your post,
not a nicely formatted Cockburn excerpt.

I expect I'm missing a transformational step.
(Yes, this is the ultimate-lazy approach to grokking Style Sheets, I admit -
sometimes ya gets lucky with intuition; others, not. ;-)

Ah well ... goto: Composer Help | Read | Test | proliferate --->

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