Anyway to simulate a table, i.e. to line things up? [View all]

[progree]

Back before June 2017 or whenever the second big hack occurred, there were special HTML tags that allowed one to make tables.

Those special tags have been turned off, apparently permanently
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1256&pid=13211

So the only way that I can make a table now (i.e. where things are lined up) is by sticking a bunch of back quotes ( ` ) to create spaces (because DU compresses multiple spaces into one space). For example:

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
{#} ACTUAL Federal Spending and Deficits - Fiscal Years 2008 - 2017, in $Billions

Fiscal year 2017 ended September 30, 2017. Similarly for all the other fiscal years.

Note: all figures in this section are actual, not budgeted. I only point out that Bush signed the FY 2009 budget.

` ` ` ` ` ` v-last Bush budget was FY 2009 (all figures are actuals, not budgeted)
2008 ` 2009 ` 2010 ` 2011 ` 2012 ` 2013 Fiscal Year
2,983 ` 3,518 ` 3,457 ` 3,603 ` 3,537 ` 3,455 Total Outlays, $Billions
(450) (1,413) (1,294)` (1,300) (1,087)` (680) Surplus (deficit), $Billions
(3.1) ` (9.8) ` (8.7) ` ` (8.5) ` ` (6.8) ` (4.1) Surplus (deficit), % of GDP

2014 ` 2015 ` 2016` 2017 Fiscal Year
3,506` 3,688 ` 3,852 ` 3,981 Total Outlays, $Billions
(485) ` (438) ` (586) ` (666) Surplus (deficit), $Billions
(2.8) `` (2.4) ` (3.2) `` (3.5) Surplus (deficit), % of GDP

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As one can see, it is not pretty, and not all that well lined up, and it takes a long long amount of trial and error to make it line up as well as it is.

And then I don't know how it looks in browsers other than my own -- other browsers / platforms might display a different font and thus it could look way not-lined-up.

A fixed-width font would help a lot (e.g. courier new, where all characters are the same width)...

Anyway, is this the best one can do? Other than, say, building a pretty table in Word or Excel and taking screen snapshots and cropping it and loading it to photobucket or imgur or whatever?

That's a helluva lot of work too for tables that I modify frequently (e.g. the one in my sig line). And people can't "scrape" it for words and numbers of interest since it is an image, not text.

Thanks for any ideas