Scott Sheffield  <scott.y.sheffield@lmco.com> wrote:
+---------------
| ...when I pad with periods the periods do not take up as much space
| as a capital M. Let's say I pad 10 characters the results come out like:
|     ABCDE....1
|     A........1
| Both of the above examples are 10 chars long yet they are not the
| same length. That is my problem.
+---------------

Yes, it's "your problem", but your problem is not the problem you *think*
it is. You see, to me (and everyone else on the net who uses a monospaced
font when reading netnews), your example above *IS* aligned correctly!!

And if you don't see it that way in this, my reply, then change the font
in your news reader to some monospaced font, not a proportional font.


-Rob

p.s. If what you're trying to do is pad correctly in a *proportional*
font and still keep the periods lined up, well, that's a much harder
problem. You will probably have to add variable whitespace kerning on
either side of each row of dots, depending on the texts on eother side.
But even if you solve *that* problem, your audience *won't* see it as
"solved" if they're reading in a monospaced font (as most of us are)...

p.p.s. I'm pretty sure TeX or LaTeX has some support macros for doing
this though, so if you write your documents in LaTeX, and output only
PostScript or PDF (*not* plain ASCII), you should be able to do it.

-----
Rob Warnock, 31-2-510		rpw3@sgi.com
SGI Network Engineering		http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
1600 Amphitheatre Pkwy.		Phone: 650-933-1673
Mountain View, CA  94043	PP-ASEL-IA