There are a couple of options that come to mind. First is to use spaces.dll, which is designed to allow outputting multiple spaces. The other option is to use a CTRL code between spaces. If you don't need to keep colors/bold/underline/etc, then the best method would be using Ctrl-O... space Ctrl-O space Ctrl-O space. You can use $str() to repeat that as many times as you need. It does double the number of characters for each space, but unless you're using long lines, it's not a problem. And if you are aligning things, I doubt you're using long lines because wrapping would mess things up. If you do need to keep previous codes, then you can use double Ctrl-B or double Ctrl-U or whatever. That increases line length even more, but also works fine.
The use of CTRL codes work very well and are not seen except if someone tries to copy the line(s) holding CTRL or tries to read a log file somewhere that doesn't hide the CTRL code. The use of the DLL works even better as long as you don't mind using a DLL.
