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Thanks for the advice. Most people replied offline and agreed with my
reasons for wanting to keep the file in .txt format. To the others who
suggested I try multiple formats (HTML, PDF, etc.), I think the issue goes
back again to whether the software required to open the file will be
installed by default on the server. While IE4 or 5 would certainly be
present for opening HTML files, Adobe Acrobat Reader would probably not.
Now, it turns out that the engineer made his request because prefers tables
to columns of tabbed text. HTML may be the way to go.
