Plan B Forum

A question for one of our board techy folks...

I started a thread here:

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5063

Where I copied and pasted some polling info from another site....

When I posted it, the columns didn't line up properly so I manually moved the spacing around until they did.

But for some reason, even though when I click on edit, and I can see that the spacing is set the way I put it, in both the preview and live on the site the numbers all run together again....

Any idea why this might be happening and how I might be able to avoid it in the future?

Thanks...

Some discussion board formats (and this appears to be one of them) simply eliminate all extraneous spaces within a typed line of text (leaving only one or two space between each word or group of characters). Maintaining the spacing in a table requires putting the whole thing in a code box ([ code][ /code]). BUT, there is still a bit of a trick to it (one that I usually get too impatient to bother with) because the text in a code box uses a monospaced font, so merely visualizing how you think the columns should look as you type is not enough; since the posting box uses a variable spaced font, you actually have to count the number of characters and spaces you are using to properly align each column.

I'm just thinking now, because I have never tried this, but the easiest way might be to compose the table in a word processing program using a monospaced font like Courier, then copying and pasting it here within [ code][ /code] tags. It will not look aligned in the posting box, but when you preview it, it should look just like the original you typed.

(note where I used formatting tags I introduced spaces so they would not format as a code box)

This is what I got by formatting the table in WordPad, using Courier as the font. If you quote this post so you can see how it actually transcribed into the editing box, you can see that it does not look aligned (in a variable spaced font):

Thanks Scooter.

Cool! Good solution, Scooter!

BTW, one way of putting in "extraneous spaces" when the board format doesn't want to allow them is to put in an appropriate number of periods............................................................and then change the font color for the line of periods to white. (Actually, I guess you could use a row of any random characters; periods [or decimal points, or dots, or whatever you want to call them] are just what I use.)

*snigger*


Periods...