Jeff wrote:

Yup , thats it, just had a play with OE view, text size and using the
different settings you can make them all correct in turn, which means ascii
art is pointless as everyone has different settings / readers

Yes, you are right. However, there _is_ a common standard for ascii art
- it must be rendered with a monospaced font (i.e. non proportional).
You also need to use hard spaces to position items since tabs are not a
fixed size but can be interpreted differently at whim.

Have a look at a posting on google groups:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...ecca883967b539
http://tinyurl.com/4cqen

That shows you how most folks will see it.

If you use a proportional font (as OE does by default) then you have the
problem that it will look wrong for anyone else not using the same font
on the same platform - and in some cases you may find that getting the
same representation on another platform is impossible. Whereas just
about every platform has the option display a monospaced font.

If you routinely read news with a proportional font, you can switch to
just about any fixed width one, and get the desired result when a
diagram makes no sense. If however you read with a fixed font but need
the switch to a proportional one to view a diagram, you then have the
problem of which proportional font to choose since they will all make it
look different!


--
Cheers,

John.

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