>Hi Tommy,
>
>We faced the same problem several years ago. I can confirm David's words. Finally I gave up trying to work around this spacing problem and went out with manual creation of the file, e.g. scanning the data file and writing data to output file using strtofile...
>
>Also Hilmar has a class designed for similar purpose...

OOOoooooooooo..... class good!! Me like classes!!! Where???

Thanks a bunch!!!

>
>>Will do... plus I found something on the Internet from Ed Raul (written years ago) about it.... that you need to use Monospace font to get it to work correctly.
>>
>>Thanks a bunch!
>>
>>Tommy
>>
>>>Tommy,
>>>
>>>>_ASCIICOLS = somenumber.... where the default is 80.
>>>>I tried that, but it didn't seem to have any effect (I set the output to 160 columns).
>>>
>>>It has been a long time since I played with the _ASCIICOLS and _ASCIIROWS values for ASCII output, but I do remember that the settings that finally worked for me did not make much sense at all.
>>>
>>>From a post back in 2004:
>>>
>>>The way those work, particularly _ASCIICOLS, is pretty baffling and is not always logical (at least is not always intuitively logical). Try some oddball settings like 40 or 50 for _ASCIICOLS, as well as larger than the default and you just might hit a combination that works. Also, different settings for _ASCIIROWS might make a difference.
>>>
>>>...In testing a couple of years ago, I found that the settings I tried that seemed less likely to be right actually helped with the spacing of data on the page.
>>>
>>>I'm sorry that I can't give you a logical answer (because I never figured out how those settings are supposed to work), but just try a few non-logical values like 40 or 50 and see if it changes anything at all.