NAME
    Text::ASCIITable - Create a nice formatted table using ASCII characters.
    Preatty nifty if you want to output dynamic text to your console or
    other fixed-size displays, and at the same time display it in a nice
    readable, or "cool" way.

SYNOPSIS
      use Text::ASCIITable;
      $t = new Text::ASCIITable;
      $t->setCols(['Nickname','Name']);
      $t->addRow('Lunatic-|','Håkon Nessjøen');
      $t->addRow('tesepe','William Viker');
      $t->addRow('espen','Espen Ursin-Holm');
      $t->addRow('mamikk','Martin Mikkelsen');
      $t->addRow('p33r','Espen A. Jütte');
      print $t->draw(); 

FUNCTIONS
  new(options)

    Initialize a new table. You can specify output-options. For more
    options, check out the usage for setOptions(name,value)

      Usage:
      $t = new Text::ASCIITable;

      Or with options:
      $t = new Text::ASCIITable({ hide_Lastline => 1, reportErrors => 0});

  setCols(@cols)

    Define the columns for the table(compare with <TH> in HTML). For example
    "setCols(['Id','Nick','Name'])". Note that you cannot add Cols after you
    have added a row. You also cannot have multiline text as columnnames.

  addCol($col)

    Add a column to the columnlist. This still can't be done after you have
    added a row.

  addRow(@collist)

    Adds one row to the table. This must be an array of strings. If you
    defined 3 columns. This array must have 3 items in it. And so on. Should
    be self explanatory. The strings can contain newlines.

  alignCol($col,$direction)

    Given a columnname, it aligns all data to the given direction in the
    table. This looks nice on numerical displays in a column. The column
    names in the table will not be unaffected by the alignment. Possible
    directions is: left, center and right. (Hint: It is often very useful to
    align numbers to the right, and text to the left.)

  setColWidth($col,$width,$strict)

    Wordwrapping/strict size. Set a max-width(in chars) for a column. If
    last parameter is 1, the column will be set to the specified width.

     Usage:
      $t->setColWidth('Description',30);

  getTableWidth()

    If you need to know how wide your table will be before you draw it. Use
    this function.

  setOptions(name,value)

    Use this to set options like:
    hide_FirstLine,hide_HeadLine,hide_HeadRow,hide_LastLine,reportErrors,all
    owHTML,alignHeadRow or drawRowLine.

      $t->setOptions('hide_HeadLine',1);

    When allowHTML is set to 1, it makes it possible to use this table in a
    HTML page where you want links/colors on the text inside the table. You
    can then use <B>hello</B> inside a row/columnname without the
    table-width to break apart. When using Text::ASCIITable on webpages,
    remember to use <PRE> before and after the output of this table.

    Possible Options

    hide_HeadRow
        Hides output of the columnlisting. Together with hide_HeadLine, this
        makes a table only show the rows. (However, even though the
        column-names will not be shown, they will affect the output if they
        have for example ridiculoustly long names, and the rows contains
        small amount of info. You would end up with a lot of whitespace)

    reportErrors
        Set to 0 to disable error reporting. Though if a function encounters
        an error, it will still return the value 1, to tell you that things
        didn't go exactly as they should.

    allowHTML
        If you are going to use Text::ASCIITable to be shown on HTML pages,
        you should set this option to 1 when you are going to use HTML tags
        inside the rows, and you want the browser to handle the table
        correct.

    alignHeadRow
        Set wich direction the Column-names(in the headrow) are supposed to
        point. Must be left, right or center.

    hide_FirstLine, hide_HeadLine, hide_LastLine
        Speaks for it self?

    drawRowLine
        Set this to 1 to print a line between each row. You can also define
        the outputstyle of this line in the draw() function.

    headingText
        Add a heading above the columnnames/rows wich uses the whole width
        of the table to output a heading/title to the table. The
        heading-part of the table is automaticly shown when headingText
        contains the chosen heading.

    headingAlign
        Align the heading(as mentioned above) to left, right or center.

    headingStartChar, headingStopChar
        Choose the startingchar and endingchar of the row where the title
        is. The default is '|' on both. If you didn't understand this, try
        reading about the draw() function.

  draw([@topdesign,@toprow,@middle,@middlerow,@bottom,@rowline])

    All the arrays containing the layout is optional. If you want to make
    your own "design" to the table, you can do that by giving this method
    these arrays containing information about which characters to use where.

    Custom tables

    The draw method takes "6" arrays of strings to define the layout. The
    first, third, fifth and sixth is LINE layout and the second and fourth
    is ROW layout. The "fourth" parameter is repeated for each row in the
    table. The sixth parameter is only used if drawRowLine is enabled.

     $t->draw(<LINE>,<ROW>,<LINE>,<ROW>,<LINE>,[<ROWLINE>])

    LINE
        Takes an array of "4" strings. For example "['|','|','-','+']"

        *   LEFT - Defines the left chars. May be more than one char.

        *   RIGHT - Defines the right chars. May be more then one char.

        *   LINE - Defines the char used for the line. Must be only one
            char.

        *   DELIMETER - Defines the char used for the delimeters. Must be
            only one char.

    ROW Takes an array of "3" strings. You should not give more than one
        char to any of these parameters, if you do.. it will probably
        destroy the output.. Unless you do it with the knowledge of how it
        will end up. An example: "['|','|','+']"

        *   LEFT - Define the char used for the left side of the table.

        *   RIGHT - Define the char used for the right side of the table.

        *   DELIMETER - Defines the char used for the delimeters.

    Examples:

    The easiest way:

     $t->draw();

    Explanatory example:

     $t->draw( ['L','R','l','D'],  # LllllllDllllllR
               ['L','R','D'],      # L info D info R
               ['L','R','l','D'],  # LllllllDllllllR
               ['L','R','D'],      # L info D info R
               ['L','R','l','D']   # LllllllDllllllR
              );

    Nice example:

     $t->draw( ['.','.','-','-'],   # .-------------.
               ['|','|','|'],       # | info | info |
               ['|','|','-','-'],   # |-------------|
               ['|','|','|'],       # | info | info |
               [' \\','/ ','_','|'] #  \_____|_____/
              );

    Nice example2:

     $t->draw( ['.=','=.','-','-'],   # .=-----------=.
               ['|','|','|'],         # | info | info |
               ['|=','=|','-','+'],   # |=-----+-----=|
               ['|','|','|'],         # | info | info |
               ["'=","='",'-','-']    # '=-----------='
              );

    With Options:

     $t->setOptions('drawRowLine',1);
     $t->draw( ['.=','=.','-','-'],   # .=-----------=.
               ['|','|','|'],         # | info | info |
               ['|-','-|','=','='],   # |-===========-|
               ['|','|','|'],         # | info | info |
               ["'=","='",'-','-'],   # '=-----------='
               ['|=','=|','-','+']    # rowseperator
              );
     Which makes this output:
       .=-----------=.
       | info | info |
       |-===========-|
       | info | info |
       |=-----+-----=| <-- between each row
       | info | info |
       '=-----------='

FEATURES
    In case you need to know if this module has what you need, I have made
    this list of features included in Text::ASCIITable.

    Configurable layout
        You can easily alter how the table should look, in many ways. There
        are a few examples in the draw() section of this documentation. And
        you can remove parts of the layout or even add a heading-part to the
        table.

    Text Aligning
        Align the text in a column to the left, or right or center. Usually
        you want to align text to right if you only have numbers in that
        row.

    Multiline support in rows
        With the \n(ewline) character you can have rows use more than just
        one line on the output. (This looks nice with the drawRowLine option
        enabled)

    Optional wordwrap support (using Text::Wrap)
        If you have installed Text::Wrap, you will have the possibility to
        use have rows not be wider than a set amount of characters. If a
        line exceedes for example 30 characters, the line will be broken up
        in several lines.

    HTML support
        If you put in <HTML> tags inside the rows, the output would usually
        be broken when viewed in a browser, since the browser "execute" the
        tags instead of displaying it. But if you enable allowHTML. You are
        able to write html tags inside the rows without the output being
        broken if you display it in a browser. But you should not mix this
        with wordwrap, since this could make undesirable results.

    Errorreporting
        If you write a script in perl, and don't want users to be notified
        of the errormessages from Text::ASCIITable. You can easily turn of
        error reporting by setting reportErrors to 0. You will still get an
        1 instead of undef returned from the function.

REQUIRES
    Exporter, Carp, Text::Wrap

AUTHOR
    Håkon Nessjøen, lunatic@cpan.org

UPDATING
    Do you want to know when new versions are out, etc? Go to
    http://files.loopback.no/ASCIITable/

VERSION
    Current version is 0.09.

COPYRIGHT
    Copyright 2002-2003 by Håkon Nessjøen. All rights reserved. This module
    is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the
    same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO
    Text::FormatTable, Text::Table

