Strange issues using columns in log messages

[LordoftheMoo]

I'm trying to send a message to the logbook, where I have two columns of text (basically it's a "the left is what Option A will have; the right, Option B" notification). I'm trying to use the in-game column stuff, but I'm getting a pair of strange issues in how it's working. This is the code I'm using:

Code: Select all

Text file entry:
<t id="1097">[text cols='2' colspacing='35' colwidth='45']moo\nmoo2\nmoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo3\nmoo4\nmoo5[/text] </t>
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script code that prints this:
$messagebody = sprintf: pageid=7421 textid=1097, null, null, null, null, null
send incoming message $messagebody to player: display it=[TRUE]

From these, this is the output I get:
[ external image ]

So I have three questions on what I'm seeing. The first one is "Why is the first column greyed out compared to the second?". This is true even if I set a color (such as green) on the text. The first column is always greyed out compared to the second. Is there something that I should be doing to make this not happen?

The second question I have is "Why is it ignoring the colwidth value?". I have tried setting this to a variety of values (including '5'), but the output never varies. It does seem to be using the colspacing correctly; I have altered that setting and seen effects from the changes. So while the spacing works, the width value is simply ignored. The very long line should only wrap to 2 lines, based on the 45 colwidth setting, if I'm understanding this right.

The third question is "I have tried using minlines='xxx' and nothing seems to matter, it just ignores it and decides for itself how many lines". For the code above I didn't include it because that's from a snippet after I gave up messing with that setting, but that wasn't working either.

In case it's important, this is in TC v2.5. From what I can tell, these all should work 2.5 and up. Any ideas what I might be doing wrong, or what might just not be working? I am trying, if possible, to avoid using additional libraries or scripts to fix this, and where it's not in a menu I'm thinking that sending all of it in an array (as mentioned elsewhere on the forums) won't work the same or at all. Thanks in advance for any suggestions!