thanks, everyone, for your feedback! it seems that to partially solve my immediate problem for the Camel Karaf commands, i should just assume a certain console width (e.g. 80 chars) and (statically) optimize the columns based on the width of expected content - e.g. "status" columns will be shorter due to limited enumerated values, and "name" columns will consume the remaining width due to arbitrary user-dependent values.
then, for the long-term general solution (benefiting other projects than just Camel), we could pursue publishing as a service the new table printer that Christian has been working on. i'm not sure if this is immediately within my abilities, but it's an endeavor i would certainly follow. would it be agreeable to open a Karaf JIRA requesting this kind of modularization for the table printer somewhere down the line? ~ Reuben
