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Is there a webapp that can create ASCII-art tables like this one? It doesn't have to use ASCII (it can be Unicode), I meant ASCII in the sense of ASCII-art.

------------------------------------------------
|           | ColA            | ColB           |
------------------------------------------------
| Row1      | CellA1          | CellB1         |
------------------------------------------------
| Row2      | CellA2          | CellB2         |
------------------------------------------------
| Row3      | CellA3          | CellB3         |
------------------------------------------------

This would be useful for sites that don't support proper tables (like StackExchange).

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4 Answers

up vote 35 down vote accepted

Now there is: Format Text as Table.

I've been meaning to create this utility for a while. I was actually inspired by MySQL's command line utility and the lack of tables on SO. So thanks for reminding me to make it.

And thanks to @Lipis for the Unicode char idea.

Here's an example of the output:

+------+--------+--------+
|      | ColA   | ColB   |
+------+--------+--------+
| Row1 | CellA1 | CellB1 |
| Row2 | CellA2 | CellB2 |
| Row3 | CellA3 | CellB3 |
+------+--------+--------+
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I don't always want to fire up Excel to put in a table. Would you consider allowing other delimiters (comma, 2+ spaces, semicolon...) to be used in your utility? – Kevin Vermeer May 9 '11 at 22:19
1  
this is excellent! referenced at meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/96125/… – Jeff Atwood♦ Jun 23 '11 at 9:08
@KevinVermeer: I made it so that you can type the tab character in the edit box. Does that solve the problem, or do you still want other delimiters? – Senseful Dec 22 '11 at 2:00
@Senseful - Nope, that's fine! One delimiter is plenty. – Kevin Vermeer Dec 22 '11 at 14:28
up vote 3 down vote

While not especially for tables, Asciiflow is a generic tool for this kind of thing.

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This is amazing. Thank you for this link. – Yves Junqueira Oct 2 '12 at 12:35
up vote 2 down vote

I don't know any but if they are going to use it why not creating something better with ASCII, let's say something like this:

 ╔══════╤═══════════╤════════╗
 ║  ID  │ Name      │  Age   ║ 
 ╠══════╪═══════════╪════════╣
 ║  1   │ John      │   24   ║ 
 ╟──────┼───────────┼────────╢
 ║  2   │ Jeff      │   19   ║ 
 ╟──────┼───────────┼────────╢
 ║  3   │ Joel      │   42   ║ 
 ╚══════╧═══════════╧════════╝
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3  
By not being ASCII there are places where that won't render correctly. The point of using ASCII in the way the OP did is to give it the best chance of rendering correctly in a wide range of environments. It may be low fidelity, but given a mono-spaced font it WILL always look the same. Your version is dependent on a LOT more stuff. – Michael Kohne Sep 15 '10 at 10:51
@Michael It is ASCII :D and it works where stackexchange works.. :) But I don't think that they will implement that.. – Lipis Sep 15 '10 at 18:53
2  
The table is definitely not ASCII. The double-line corners have character codes above 127, and ASCII is a 7-bit encoding, see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII . – Gintautas Miliauskas Sep 16 '10 at 10:54
3  
@Gintautas you're right.. but still it works where stackexchange works.. :) Anyways this is not even an answer for this question.. I can easily implement this service and post it as an answer.. because couldn't find anything for it :D – Lipis Sep 16 '10 at 13:29
Have you implemented this service? – Kevin Vermeer May 9 '11 at 22:20
up vote 1 down vote

Found this one while looking for simple circuit diagrams , it is the predecessor

Ascii Paint

You draw and ascii art appears. If you are not good with drawing tables in Word, this might be a bit hard, but it was fun.

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