simple formatting possibilities

[Jon LaBadie]

On Thu, Aug 27, 2020 at 01:40:08AM -0400, Jon LaBadie wrote:
> For so long I've used mutt and composed my emails in ASCII,
> now I guess Unicode, that I'm ignorant of potential approaches
> to a bit of formatted text.
> 
> Both a friend and I organize weekly online bridge games for
> 20-30 players.  My seating notices go out as simple text.  He
> creates a 2 column Word document and includes it as an attachment.
> Players who wish to see his seatings must use an external office
> suite to view the attachment.
> 
> I don't like the attachment approach but the formatting (minimal,
> bold, alignment,?) he uses and the 2 column arrangement would be useful.
> Of course, my using constant width characters and spaces kills
> any alignment my recipients would see with their proportional fonts
> and spaces.
> 
> Is there anything I could use to create such "formated text", then
> distribute it in the body of a mutt message having some hope that
> the recipients see it correctly?
> 

I fear I've mislead the list readers.  I'm not looking to show some
thing analagous to a bridge game or hand.  Much more basic than that.

Currently I send out an email with a paragraph or two of text followed
by lines like:

   Table 1
N: Geo Washington (host)
E: John Adams
S: Tom Jefferson
W: James Madison

Similar lines to those would follow for 6 or 7 tables.  We will now be
playing 2 sessions each night and I have to double the number of tables.
It would be nice to be able to do it in 2 columns, like:

     Table 1                                 Table 1
  N: Geo Washington (host)                N: Geo Washington (host)
  E: John Adams                           E: James Monroe
  S: Tom Jefferson                        S: J.Q. Adams
  W: James Madison                        W: Andrew Jackson


You viewing it in mutt inside a terminal window probably see two
nicely aligned columns.  But readers using thunderbird, outlook,
etc. would not because of the proportional spacing.

As I'm asking about something for formatting, I threw on to the
dream list things like "bold" font.

Sorry for any confusion.

I probably will look into PGN because I do somethings email about
hands I've played, etc.

Jon
-- 
Jon H. LaBadie                 jon at jgcomp.com
 11226 South Shore Rd.          (703) 787-0688 (H)
 Reston, VA  20190              (703) 935-6720 (C)