Edit Box Size: Tips for Easier Post Creation

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jim mcnamara
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I guess this is my perceptual failing. It is difficult to make changes to a post because the the text in the edit box appears so very differently formatted from what is shown in the thread.

It took me an hour to get together one post on genetics just a minute ago. I re-edited probably 10 times. There may still be boo-boos, but I gave up.

I've tried cutting and pasting from a desktop editor like UltraEdit, but text formatted the way I want doesn't always transfer over well. Suggestions?
 

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No a table of items about some data on homozygpus plants. Numbers refused to line up in columns. I was using an ascii editor, is that the problem, locale?
 
jim mcnamara said:
No a table of items about some data on homozygpus plants. Numbers refused to line up in columns. I was using an ascii editor, is that the problem, locale?
Did you try wrapping the content in a code tag to preserve spacing?
 
The default settings are for UNIX carriage control. Tried windows carriage control. Tried UTF-8. I think it has to be some setting on my side. People do not usually complain about things like this particular problem AFAIK...
 
I tried [ quote ] tags. Did not try code tags, will that enforce constant character width? I would expect so.
 
Unless you use a code environment, the forum will keep multiple whitespaces in a row but browsers will ignore them to display the post. Quote this post to see the effect, it is HTML standard.
 
jim mcnamara said:
No a table of items about some data on homozygpus plants. Numbers refused to line up in columns. I was using an ascii editor, is that the problem, locale?
That's (partly, at least) a consequence of using a proportional font, I'd say. Digit symbols and spaces have different widths.
000000000000
1111111 1111 (that's a single space gap)
000000000000
555555555555

You could set a fixed-width font yourself, or follow Greg's advice.
 
That is what I intend to do. Saw a nice paper today on endogenous insertions of HERV (virus) DNA into human DNA. Fortunately if I decide to post it, formatting will not eat me for lunch. Will play later on. Thanks.