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#### 3.7.10 Plain Text

Writes tables in a simple text-based format designed to be read by humans. No reader exists for this format.

The handler behaviour may be modified by specifying one or more comma-separated name=value configuration options in parentheses after the handler name, e.g. "`text(params=true,sampledRows=10000)`". The following options are available:

`params = true|false`
  Whether to output table parameters as well as row data. (Default: `true`)
`sampledRows = <int>`
  The number of rows examined on a first pass of the table to determine the width of each column. Only a representative number of rows needs to be examined, but if a formatted cell value after this limit is wider than the cells up to it, then such later wide cells may get truncated. If the value is <=0, all rows are examined in the first pass; this is the default, but it can be configured to some other value if that takes too long. (Default: `0`)
`maxCell = <int>`
  Maximum width in characters of an output table cell. Cells longer than this will be truncated. (Default: `40`)
`maxParam = <int>`
  Maximum width in characters of an output table parameter. Parameters with values longer than this will be truncated. (Default: `160`)
`encoding = ASCII|UTF-8|UTF-16|...`
  Specifies the character encoding used in the output file. (Default: `UTF-8`)

Multiple tables may be written to a single output file using this format.

An example looks like this:

    Table name: animals.vot
    Description: Some animals
    Author: Mark Taylor
    +-------+-----------+---------------+------+--------+--------+
    | RECNO | SPECIES   | NAME          | LEGS | HEIGHT | MAMMAL |
    +-------+-----------+---------------+------+--------+--------+
    | 1     | pig       | Pigling Bland | 4    | 0.8    | true   |
    | 2     | cow       | Daisy         | 4    | 2.0    | true   |
    | 3     | goldfish  | Dobbin        |      | 0.05   | false  |
    | 4     | ant       |               | 6    | 0.001  | false  |
    | 5     | ant       |               | 6    | 0.001  | false  |
    | 6     | queen ant | Ma'am         | 6    | 0.002  | false  |
    | 7     | human     | Mark          | 2    | 1.8    | true   |
    +-------+-----------+---------------+------+--------+--------+

The handler class for this format is `TextTableWriter`.

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STIL - Starlink Tables Infrastructure Library
Starlink User Note252
STIL web page: http://www.starlink.ac.uk/stil/
Author email: m.b.taylor@bristol.ac.uk