P.S.
___ _______ ___ ___ ___ __ ____
/ _ \/ __/ _ | / _ \ / _ \/ _ |/ / / / /
/ // / _// __ |/ // / / ___/ __ / /_/ / /__
/____/___/_/ |_/____/ /_/ /_/ |_\____/____/

Anyone know why ASKII art like this is always scrunched up and meaningless
until I copy and paste it in to Notepad? I'm using Windows 98 and Outlook
Express 6. I've probably just answered my own question haven't I.

Not really, it's because you are using a variable pitch (proportional)
font (virtually any TT or type 1 - Arial, Times, Zapf, Garamond etc. )
to view news postings and ASCII 'art' demands a fixed pitch font such as
Courier (there are others but very few).

Essenially, the width of a each character, in a proportional font, is
the number of pixels required to form the character plus a lead-in and
exit amount of 'white'. This is further adjusted by reference to the
font's kerning table depending upon the preceding and following
character pairs so that text on a page looks 'tidy' and not full of
'white holes' between characters.

Fixed pitch fonts (as the name indicates) have a fixed number of pixels
allocated to each character so an 'M' takes up just the same amount as
an 'i' or '.'.

JG