To successfully and confidently send e-mails in which you are trying
to construct ASCII art (of which the lowly table is a part):
1. Use monospaced fonts (those of us with well-established e-mail
clients can set the font in which we view an e-mail; I suggest to
those who can that they use monospaced fonts to view and send all
mail). If you do not, you will use whatever number of tabs and spaces
-you- believe -you- need to read -your- e-mail. But remember -you-
are only 1/N of the number of viewers.
2. Use only the space bar, which is unambiguous. Tabs can be defined
as different numbers of spaces, depending on your settings. Not to
mention mono-spaced versus variable-spaced fonts.
3. Alas, many seem to insist on it these days, but those who use
browsers for e-mail are prone to be victims of the browser
manufacturers' whims as to what their users should be forcing on
everyone else, including odd fonts and rendering in html. Not to
mention that there are now many versions of browsers out there, each
of which has its unique anomalies.
The founders of the internet did indeed know what they were doing for
the most part.I admit am an internet bigot, I think e-mail should be
text/plain. I throw away unread most e-mail that shows up rendered as
html. Simple tables I try to read :-) and I commend those who at
least would like to learn how to do it. I run across too many who say
"if you can't read it like I send it, tough."