Tables need space to roam (horizontally)

One thing in particular that doesn't fit on half my screen is tables. Most tables need quite a lot of horizontal space. Otherwise you get horizontal scrolling, a nuisance. Examples:

• A database query screen, like the one in SQL Server Management Studio, wouldn't work in two columns with code on the left and query results on the right. The code would fit nicely, but the results are tabular data. The people who made Management Studio apparently realized this; the app has two wide panels (code in the top half, results in the bottom half) and you can't change it.

• The Inform 7 language has this ill-conceived feature where you can put tabular data in your program by literally typing in a tab-delimited table. As in:

  Table of Conversation
  topic reply quip
  "dream/dreams/nightmare/nightmares/sleep" "'Sleep well?' you ask solicitously.
  
  'Not really,' she replies, edging away from you. So much for that angle." "'Ghastly nightmares,' she remarks. You nod politely."
  "marriage/love/wedding/boyfriend/beau/lover" "'So,' you say. 'This is a little weird since we just met, but, um. Would you like to get married?'
  
  She looks at you nervously. 'Do I have to? I mean, I'd rather not.'
  
  Well, this could get prickly fast." "'I, er,' she says. 'I hope I'm not supposed to marry you or something.' Uh oh."
  ...
  

  That makes perfect sense, right? Well, I guess having line breaks within table cells makes it a little harder to read. And tabs look too much like spaces. But if you solve those problems, you're still left with this:

  Table of Conversation

  topic	reply	quip
  "dream/dreams/ nightmare/nightmares/ sleep"	"'Sleep well?' you ask solicitously. 'Not really,' she replies, edging away from you. So much for that angle."	"'Ghastly nightmares,' she remarks. You nod politely."
  "marriage/love/ wedding/boyfriend/ beau/lover"	"'So,' you say. 'This is a little weird since we just met, but, um. Would you like to get married?' She looks at you nervously. 'Do I have to? I mean, I'd rather not.' Well, this could get prickly fast."	"'I, er,' she says. 'I hope I'm not supposed to marry you or something.' Uh oh."

  A table with three columns, two of which can hold large chunks of text, is going to have trouble fitting on half the screen at any reasonable font size.

• You can force tabular data into non-tabular form. For example, the default view for Windows Explorer isn't tabular. (Or rather, it wasn't in XP. The Mac Finder is the same way.) But geeks tend to set the view to "Details", which is tabular, and leave it that way. We often need to be able to look at the largest files in a directory, or see which ones have changed recently, or select only the .cpp files; and in Details mode we can do those things by clicking on column headers, if not just by looking at the screen. It's a trade-off: determining the size or date-last-modified for a particular file requires a bit of care, because it's not immediately obvious how the rows line up. (Clicking on a file only highlights the filename, not the whole row, so that doesn't help.)

  A compromise UI would show things in a narrow format with the details initially shown in small print. It would be like Explorer's "Tiles" view, but arranging the tiles vertically, not in a grid. Ctrl+Scroll would zoom in and out, showing more or less detail. You could right-click on the small print and say "Break out Date Modified as a separate column". As a pleasant side effect, this UI would fit on half my screen. There's probably a reason I've never seen this, but speaking from innocence, it sounds nice.