Formatting a string to be a columned block of text

[Duncan Booth]

"Paul McGuire" <ptmcg at austin.rr._bogus_.com> wrote:
> By the way, this variable contains only 3 (very long) lines of text,
> one for each paragraph.  (Not immediately obvious after Usenet wraps
> the text.) 

Usenet doesn't wrap text, all it has is a convention which suggests that
people posting to usenet should wrap their text at 72 characters. Your
newsreader probably wrapped the text for you when you were posting, but
for deliberately long lines many newsreaders will have an option
somewhere to turn off the text wrapping (and the reader probably also
has to turn off text wrapping when they read it). 

For source code where you want long unwrapped strings you would have
been better to do the text wrapping in an editor first and use backslash
line continuations.

e.g.
gettysburgAddress = """\
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this \
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the \
proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, \
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are \
met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a \
portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here \
gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting \
and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate \
-- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, \
who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to \
add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we \
say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the \
living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they \
who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us \
to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that \
from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for \
which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here \
highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that \
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that \
government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not \
perish from the earth.\
""".split('\n')