Like most, my team and I have had to evaluate the merits of using or
omitting
the concept of text formatting.  Our conclusion was that 

Teaching formatting to introductory students holds merit.  How to accomplish 
this goal with the constraints of Java formatting is open for debate.  

Our solution was to develop a Format class.  This class is a wrapper class 
that contains methods that will take any primitive and return a string in 
a specified field format.  

We have tested this with our students and it seems to work well.

For example, if your wished to format 3.14159 in a field of eight 
rounded to two decimals you would use

	double pi = 3.14159;
	System.out.println( Format.doubleField(pi,8,2) );

To accomplish nicely formatted columns, we instructed our students that
all the data must be wrapped in a Format field.  We draw analogies to
spread sheets and believe there will be nice transfer when we move to
output objects, and their properties, in swing.

Another quick example:

         CPU(s)          5    156.99    784.95
         Monitor(s)	 3     81.00    243.00
         =====================================
         Total                         1027.95

Would be coded as:

      System.out.print(
		Format.indent(10) +
		Format.stringField(label1,15) +
		Format.intField(quant1,2) +
		Format.doubleField(unitPrice1,10,2) +
		Format.doubleField(totalPrice1,10,2)
      );

      System.out.print(
		Format.indent(10) +
		Format.stringField(label2,15) +
		Format.intField(quant2,2) +
		Format.doubleField(unitPrice2,10,2) +
		Format.doubleField(totalPrice2,10,2)
      );

      System.out.print(
		Format.indent(10) +
		Format.stringField("=====================================",15)
      );

      System.out.print(
		Format.indent(10) +
		Format.stringField("Total",15) +
		Format.doubleField(total,22,2)
      );

With this clean code I am sure you can see all kinds of possibilities.
Replace the variables with an array data structure in a loop and
your table remains lined up.  Outputting data from a data file
in tabular form becomes easy.

I am including my beta version of the class for everyone to evaluate.
Please feel free to use it and, most importantly, send or post your
feed back.  We want to incorporate as many ideas as possible and submit
our final class to Sun for consideration.

Tom