HTML collapses whitespace. Welcome to the Internet.
Also, please realize that ASCII art is doomed without <pre> tags, might still be doomed without stylesheets (which you can't have in LJ comments), and even then might still be doomed. HTML is a language of words, not pictures, and there is no way whatsoever to guarantee that the layout will be the way you want. This is a feature: for all you know, my browser window is ten characters wide and sideways, with automatic translation into Basque. In general, if you want a picture, make a picture; and if you just want to dash off a piece of ASCII art, use <tt> (fixed-width font) and <pre> (pre-formatted whitespace) and hope for the best.
And yeah, technically you should use for spaces you don't want to wrap. That's why they're called non-breaking spaces, after all. And yeah, you have to use & to get an ampersand.
Go RTFM and TOFM now. Without these clues, your web sites will never come out quite right.
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Date: 2003-05-01 12:35 pm (UTC)Also, please realize that ASCII art is doomed without <pre> tags, might still be doomed without stylesheets (which you can't have in LJ comments), and even then might still be doomed. HTML is a language of words, not pictures, and there is no way whatsoever to guarantee that the layout will be the way you want. This is a feature: for all you know, my browser window is ten characters wide and sideways, with automatic translation into Basque. In general, if you want a picture, make a picture; and if you just want to dash off a piece of ASCII art, use <tt> (fixed-width font) and <pre> (pre-formatted whitespace) and hope for the best.
And yeah, technically you should use for spaces you don't want to wrap. That's why they're called non-breaking spaces, after all. And yeah, you have to use & to get an ampersand.
Go RTFM and TOFM now. Without these clues, your web sites will never come out quite right.