This document exists to provide an example for reference on Usenet of typesetting fixed point text with HTML. It corresponds to a Usenet rec.games.rougelike.nethack rather off topic discussion that began here.

This is an attempt to show how to do a little fancy typesetting of fixed pitch text with HTML markup, using an example from the www.textfiles.com archives found here.

I apologize that the only example in the above archived set of plain text files in which I could easily find (but after a lot of looking) a small but complicatedly nested table with difficult typesetting requirements to use for this example is also rife with sophomoric obscenities. Just skip reading forward if that's going to be an issue for you.

Here is the original text simply set with the HTML <pre> (for "preformatted") feature, which assumes fixed pitch text, cut and pasted from the above link:

  Music Parodies: Ricky martin - Living la vida Homo  
                  Sisqo        - Please don't Wear that Thong!
                  ICP          - Eminem diss, Slim Anus
                  C. Aguilera  - Hooker in a bottle
                 

  Prank Calls   : Phone Call to a Paki - You took my Paper! (Fucking Funny!!!)
                  Prank Phone Call     - I'm gonna fuck your day up  
                  Eminem               - Curtis

  Misc          : Adam Sandler - The beating of a spanish teacher

Here is the same fixed pitch text, but in a different size to emphasize that it was done another way, laid out by the HTML <table> feature, attempting to match details of the above layout, like which parts line up and which parts don't:

If "you" look at the HTML markup source code for this page, you'll see that the markup to create the above fixed pitch table is bulky, but fairly simple, and extremely repetitious. I can't begin to list the number of "on the job learning" tricks that are embedded in that markup. The result is also a demonstration of the maxum about markup languages that the more you want to fight the markup's easy ways to do something, the more markup, the more arcane kinds of markup, and the more effort the job will take.