Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Computing/2014 December 21

= December 21 =

Alphanumerical character with the exact same pixel width as a space when viewed as text?
Im attempting to post ASCII art on the Steam Powered User Forums. Said art uses a lot of spaces, which get stripped out by the forum and would ruin the art. My solution is to replace every space with a letter/number/character colored transparently via [color=272727]_[/color] to fill the gaps. However, the character in choice needs to be exactly the same width as a space when outputting. How can I find a character of the exact perfect width? 98.27.241.101 (talk) 02:17, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * ASCII art is normally made with a fixed-width font - so all characters should be the same. Using a variable-width font is likely to result in alignment problems regardless of what width the space character is. AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:22, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * And courier is a common fixed-width font. When in doubt, do the I-W test:


 * III
 * WWW

III WWW


 * Which is the fixed width font ? StuRat (talk) 03:56, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Do none of the variations of non-breaking space work there? &#8209;&#8209; Mandruss  &#9742;  04:02, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * No, since the question is about horizontal spacing, not vertical spacing. StuRat (talk) 04:17, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * U+00A0 is a horizontal space, typically the same width as U+0020, that is not always stripped by software that strips whitespace. It's worth a try. -- BenRG (talk) 06:58, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Looking for an Android notepad app
Dear Wikipedians:

I am looking for an Android notepad (text editor) app with version control. That is, it automatically keeps track of all older versions (saves) of a text file that I am currently working on. I am wondering if you have good suggestions, especially one that can work offline.

Thanks for your help!

206.188.75.230 (talk) 03:06, 21 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Google Docs allows offline mode. You have to begin online. You can select a file to be offline accessible. Then, you can edit it offline. When you go back online, you can edit it. As for version control, Google Docs lets you view previous versions of a file and maintains a lengthy "undo" list. 199.15.144.250 (talk) 17:37, 22 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The offline part makes this tricky.
 * I use Flicknote. This doesn't offer version control on its own, but it can connect to a SimpleNote account, which offers incremental backups. (And is also accessible via the web, so that's handy.)
 * The downside is that it's only making backups when it can connect to Simplenote. Otherwise it's using its cached copy. APL (talk) 20:24, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

I am the OP. Thanks for all the suggestions! 76.75.148.30 (talk) 21:00, 22 December 2014 (UTC)