ascii text format

[Mel]

On Friday 21 November 2008 16:53:09 pwn wrote:
> Jonathan McKeown wrote:
> > On Friday 21 November 2008 12:49:16 pwn wrote:
> >> algouth this is not a freebsd specific text, i need to format some texts
> >> under freebsd for they appear in the center of the page when opened in a
> >> browser, but i dont want to use HTML for format them, i just want to add
> >> tabulation to my *.txt.
> >> what software/tool can i use for format my *.txt? there is command on
> >> VIM like "set textwidth" but this is not suitable for me. any help i
> >> appreciate.
> >> i add an example on a temporary host for make sure all understand.
> >> (i need to format the text for he appear like the example good.txt)
> >> http://one.xthost.info/temphost/good.txt
> >> http://one.xthost.info/temphost/bad.txt
> >
> > You seem to be fighting against your tools rather than working with them
> > - the browser will strip out your whitespace and reflow your text anyway
> > unless you prevent it somehow (<pre> tags?) so you might be better off
> > just using HTML/CSS to control the format.
> >
> > However, you could look at various tools for processing text, depending
> > exactly what you're trying to do: the manpages for fmt, groff, and pr
> > might all offer some ideas.
> >
> > Jonathan
>
> yes, i want that the text appears displayed such as manpages like, how
> can i accomplish this task?


Manpages use advanced formatting codes. You can achieve some result, by:

fmt -c 70 80 bad.txt

But anything further you will have to edit the text. Maybe you can wrap some 
formatting codes around the text for the tbl(1) program. But I agree with 
Jonathan - it's easier to reformat the text using HTML code and some of that 
can be done with a script/parser, providing the text uses some degree of 
consistency.
-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.