2

How to have a table on services that only support plain text like Facebook or Twitter, since they are all misaligned for not having a mono-spaced typeface? In other words, how to turn this:

╔═══════════════════════════════════╦════════════╦════════╗
║ Col1 ║ Col2 ║ NumCol ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════╬════════════╬════════╣
║ Value 1 ║ Value 2 ║ 123 ║
║ This is a row with only one cell ║ ║ ║
║ This row is testing html entities ║ Te
st ║ 45 ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════╩════════════╩════════╝

to this: 

╔═══════════════════════════════════╦════════════╦════════╗
║               Col1                ║    Col2    ║ NumCol ║
╠═══════════════════════════════════╬════════════╬════════╣
║ Value 1                           ║ Value 2    ║    123 ║
║ This is a row with only one cell  ║            ║        ║
║ This row is testing html entities ║ Te<br />st ║     45 ║
╚═══════════════════════════════════╩════════════╩════════╝

?


FYI: Is there a web app to create ASCII art tables? - Web Applications Stack Exchange

Ooker
  • 2,199

2 Answers2

6

The table is misaligned because it requires mono-spacing. Mono-spaced fonts are not used by Twitter and Facebook, but you may be able to replace the text with corresponding unicode fixed-width characters. This is not technically mono-spaced, characters are not necessarily positioned in alignment with a fixed grid and to my knowledge, there is no fullwidth equivalent for characters like the space, but the predictable spacing may make it a lot easier to create a decent looking table nonetheless.

The unicode block for halfwidth and fullwidth characters is U+FF00 to U+FFEF and text written in those characters ｌｏｏｋｓ ｌｉｋｅ ｔｈｉｓ. You may want to use a tool to convert text automaticaly, such as this one. The linked page also has some interesting background reading on the purpose of this set of characters.

Marcks Thomas
  • 6,344
2

You can't. Doing so requires the use of a fixed-width font, and there's no way to force that on Facebook or Twitter clients.

You also can't make use of HTML <TABLE>s, either, since there's no provision for specifying/entering them.

ewhac
  • 519