ASCII table export should use tabs?

ASCII table export should use tabs?

[Samuel Wales]

I wonder if org should export ASCII tables using tabs.

If I send to this list, I can be confident that everybody will know to
display in a monospace font.  That is not true for non-technical
audiences.  Yet I think there are times when I want to send ASCII
instead of HTML.  At least, I am not confident that /I/ know that HTML
will display correctly.

Tabs are not a perfect solution, as they will break with long entries.
 Still, you can read a broken table with tabs easier than a table
displayed in a proportional font, which I believe most nontechnical
people use.

What do you think?

Samuel

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Re: ASCII table export should use tabs?

[Eric S Fraga]

Samuel Wales <samologist@gmail.com> writes:

> I wonder if org should export ASCII tables using tabs.
>
> If I send to this list, I can be confident that everybody will know to
> display in a monospace font.  That is not true for non-technical
> audiences.  Yet I think there are times when I want to send ASCII
> instead of HTML.  At least, I am not confident that /I/ know that HTML
> will display correctly.
>
> Tabs are not a perfect solution, as they will break with long entries.
>  Still, you can read a broken table with tabs easier than a table
> displayed in a proportional font, which I believe most nontechnical
> people use.
>
> What do you think?
>
> Samuel

I don't think Tabs will work well because either the tab positions are
unknown (depending on how the document is being read) or the tab
positions, if fixed, will be less than optimal for any given table.

For most non-technical audiences, I would recommend exporting to either
HTML or PDF if you're worried about tables being formatted correctly.  I
don't send ascii formatted text from org to hardly anybody.  

If you're sending email, as much as I dislike HTML messages, I do send
the odd one using org-mime-org-buffer-htmlize if there is formatting
that is critical to the understanding of the document.

-- 
: Eric S Fraga (GnuPG: 0xC89193D8FFFCF67D) in Emacs 24.0.50.1
: using Org-mode version 7.5 (release_7.5.115.g00134.dirty)