This is a test to see if the <PRE> and </PRE> command can do the trick for us. What I'm hoping for the ability to

    

   Lay Out Text     ------------  (very clumsy underlining with hyphens)    

  This way, without breaks       and preserving        the whitespace    as you would need     in posting poetry.    

The lines above should be indented two spaces from the left margin with three   extra spaces for the lines starting "and" and "the".  There should be one blank   line                 before and after the text, and there's a wide blank between   "line" and "before" in (what should be) the line above this one.  

Now, we're out of the PRE zone, and HTML should be wreaking its usual havoc. What I did to produce this is put <PRE> at the top and </PRE> at the bottom of the text. There are no HTM marks in it.

If that text preserves its layout I wonder if the editor could be taught to automatically enter <PRE> at the beginning and </PRE> at the end of the text. It seems to insert certain other things automatically.