>I am tring to format text in mecca.  here is an example of a mecca file
>
>    username: [user]            location:  [city]
>    time left: [remain]         downloads: [dl]
>
>What happens is depending on the length of user and remain changes the 
>position of city and dl.  Hope I am making sense.
>I dont what to have to specify curors locations, and there should be a way

 RB> So, if you want to put the cursor at (10,5) (X,Y)
 RB> You should enter [locate 5 10]

 MB> Kinda a lot of trouble, especially if the caller doesn't support ANSI.
 MB> There gots to be another way.  PCBOARD and others will 
 MB> format the output for you.  Makes it kinda hard to 
 MB> make display screens for max.

The way it works makes perfect sense given the length of the total
characters that can be used in each item.  MAX doesn't know if my name is
short or long, it just displays the max field legth.  Since Ben Smith is a
lot shorter than Alexander Washington-Smith it will have to move the second
item on the line.

So, can you live with ONE item on four lines instead of two on two? Then
you would not need the cursor location tokens.

 MB> to a text file and reopen the text file.  I figured 
 MB> mecca was powerful, but its really limited.

Actually it is indeed quite powerful..... you can do all sorts of things.
Got a ramdisk active? Then you can do as the earlier person suggested with
no real disk write or speed loss........

--- Maximus 2.02