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Jan asked about fitting screen text in a narrowish column ... Dick
suggesting a number of ways to conquer the problem, including:
- breaking lines yourself
Tedious, but I've done it using a backslash as the last character before
the "natural" line break - add spaces to line the backslash up with the
right hand margin, as it would appear in a console window and some text
editors (vi, emacs). Don't forget to let your readers know what the
backslash is in the Text Conventions section in the intro.
> 1. Put the tabular matter in a figure and turn the figure on the
> page--make a landscape page, in other words.
As a reader, I shudder to think of having to deal with a landscaped page
or section ... I avoid this unless, well, it can't be avoided, as with
wide tables that simply can't be made narrower.
> 2. If the tabular matter is numeric, use a narrow version of your text
> font rather than your monospace font. Numerals are monospace by
> design, so you can use a condensed font and everything will still line
> up. Actually, as long as you are setting to tabs, it doesn't really
> matter whether the tabular material is all numeric or not. The tabs
> will still align.
A good suggestion, although I'd like to add that I replace tab stops with
spaces to get things to line up properly. First, I replace the tab stops
in one line to get the columns to line up properly, usually a line with
the longest content in the columns. Then I search and replace the tabs
with the magic number of spaces.
> 3. Manually make the ditches between columns narrower. You are under
> no obligation to maintain default tab settings that apply in a
> terminal emulation window.
True, true, but the caveat to fooling with the formatting is
that it adds extra work to document maintenance: you have to make your
manual changes each time you import the code, assuming there are major
changes. If there are going to be changes often, I'd go with either of
Dick's next suggestions: put the samples in a figure or an appendix.
HTH,
Mandy Kinne
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