static S asciiSideBySide(L<S> texts) {
  if (l(texts) < 2) ret unnull(first(texts));
  if (l(texts) > 2) // nicely inefficient :)
    ret asciiSideBySide(ll(asciiSideBySide(dropLast(texts)), last(texts)));
  L<S> l1 = lines(first(texts)), l2 = lines(second(texts));
  int col1 = maxStringLength(l1), n = max(l(l1), l(l2));
  new StringBuilder buf;
  for i to n:
    buf.append(rpad(unnull(get(l1, i)), col1))
      .append(unnull(get(l2, i))).append("\n");
  ret str(buf);
}