Help aligning my text into columns in my email

[dotcomtim]

I am finding it difficult to get my text to align in the correct columns when sending my orders by email.
The first and second columns align correctly but after that it goes down hill.

I realize what my problem is but I can't figure out how to solve it, the products and quantity come in
various lengths and tabs it accordingly based on the end of the each value begin entered.

$display_order = "";
foreach ($items as $item)
{
$item_amount = $item['product_amount'] * $item['quantity'];
$display_order .= "VM-".$item['product_id']."\t".$item['product_name']."\t\t".$item['quantity']."\t$".FmtAmt($item_amount)."\n";
}

Is there a different method to aligning my products or is it impossible because of the various sizes.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[devinemke]

be advised that simply using tabs and spaces to do text formatting for an email message is bit shaky. however it looks in your email client is not necessarily how it will look on another (depending on any number of user preferences). i suggest you look at sending HTML email. this still does guarantee that the message will look the same on all clients but it will give you a much greater amount of formatting control. read up on the [man]mail[/man] function.

[dotcomtim]

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll rewrite it in html format...