[colug-432] Nice Plain Text Columns and Avoiding NIH

[jep200404 at columbus.rr.com]

Let's start over. 

On Sun, 7 Aug 2011 22:16:18 -0400, Jeff Frontz <jeff.frontz at gmail.com> wrote:

> Maybe I'm misunderstanding what it is that you want, ... 

You are not the only one to misunderstand what I want. 

First of all, I am _not_ asking how to make a program, 
or about techniques for making a program. 
For decades, I have known many ways to make such a program. 
I was trying to avoid writing such a program altogether. 
Instead I was wanting to know of an already existing program 
that someone else had written. 

Here's what I am looking for. 

A _pre-existing_ program that: 
    o   is a classic plain text filter
    o   uses tabs to delimit input fields (columns)
    o   echoes the input, replacing tabs with enough spaces so 
        as to make the fields line up in nice columns
        o   each column would only get as much space as it 
            needs to line up nice                   
            (program would have to read all input to figure 
            output width of each field, before outputting 
            anything)
        o   output columns would be separated with a single ' '

or more fancily: 

A _pre-existing_ program that: 
    o   is a classic plain text filter
    o   uses tabs to delimit input fields (columns)
        (option to specify arbitrary delimiter would be nice)
    o   echoes the input, replacing tabs with spaces so 
        as to make the fields line up in nice columns
        o   each column would only get as much space as it 
            needs to line up nice                   
            (program would have to read all input to figure 
            output width of each field, before outputting 
            anything)
            (would be nice to have option to limit width of 
            particular output columns)
            (would be nice to have option to specify minimum 
            width for particular output columns)
        o   output columns would be separated with a single ' '
            (option to specify other separator would be nice)