Alternative nesting spacing on showContent: can you explain?
Some people don't like the use of tables for nesting.
IMO, the best way to do the nesting is to use nested <UL> The unordered list was designed with exactly that purpose in mind - they will download and display faster than tables or arbitrary space constants.
There are two downsides to using lists. First, the original IWE forums would indent too far per each level. I think you could solve that via CSS control over the margins per nesting level in the list.
Second, when the right hand shift came in, the wrapping would occur after practically every word. Perhaps a nobr type of thing to keep the text on one line?
Anyhow, you might consider using CSS and unordered lists as the solution.