plain text report output

[TyrusMaynard]

  Dear list,
    Forgive me for reposting my need. I feared that the post was either doomed 
to be ignored as April Fools content or that it was too lengthy a mix describing 
both plain need and suggestive innuendo about improvement for gnucash. So I am 
reposting to dissociate any need that I have from possible improvement for 
gnucash. I won't market my need in the quise of a wise suggestion (and I have 
searched the archives for prior answers with multiple 10 month blocks on the 
mailman search engine)
I would like to be able to capture the plain text of a gnucash report with well 
  aligned columns.
  The following copy still describes my goal.
Thanks   Ty

	Previous post by Ty on April 1 '06:
I am still a newbie trying to grasp the ability of gnucash printing tools.
I am learning my way through reports and wondering about the limitations for
saving *plain text* to file with well ordered rows and columns.

      Even though the menu items for Edit> Copy|Paste are greyed out  I
"discovered" that I can copy and paste from the gnucash application display window.

   I hoped I could grab the neatly displayed rows and columns of a report for a
similarly "neat"  text file.  Not so... the rows are neat, but the position of
some fields are skewed according to the amount of characters in previous fields
that compose the row. This means that a pasted text file has well aligned data
for leftward columns of a "report" and worsening skew for text derived from
rightward columns  of a report.  Now a piece of cake in the word processor of
your choice becomes tortuous work.   In many web pages, I find that sections of
text that display well also maintains good order when copied and pasted into a
text file.
   Can plain text alignment be improved in whatever code or style sheet that is
used to generate a report (assuming such a report is HTML)?
    Presumably, this would involve design for good behavior of copy/paste ...not
simply good design for the HTML displayed outcome.

   Isn't the *text file* an overlooked asset for report output?  wouldn't it be
handy to have a plain text output that is well aligned and can be further
"beautified" in any word processor?

The pixel map problem:
   The gnucash printer output seems to be purely pixel output for pdf or ps or
fax. On my Linux based printing, gnucash is the only application I have that is
loaded with text content but difficult to print, always seeming to horizontally
chop up the first and last line  between pages.
On almost every page the top or bottom line has been mowed like grass ...(not so
bad that I cant figure out which transaction has been butchered and at least
reconstruct that line by flipping pages).  Even if the printer output can be
perfected for pdf/ps, I think that the printer output misses the value of being
able to copy and paste well ordered *text*" from a gnucash display and it is
certainly no way for Dorothy to get back home to Kansas (plain text).
   If I correctly understand that HTML is used to display a gnucash report
...how can that display be made friendly to copy and paste or some other means
of saving text?
   For now I am happy to use copy/paste to store or process my output in the
wordprocessor of my choice.

   I think its great that gnucash reports are theoretically web friendly ...can
they be more text friendly  ?

Ty