You can't do that in a portable way, and Boost doesn't seem to provide such a tool. For exemple, Unix shells provide environnement variables for such information. It must exist something like that under your platform.

Assuming I can find out, or take a command argument for "wide formatting", how do I tell the formatter what width to use? Or better yet, can the formatting be done in a different way to avoid making the description such a narrow strip at the right? --John TradeStation Group, Inc. is a publicly-traded holding company (NASDAQ GS: TRAD) of three operating subsidiaries, TradeStation Securities, Inc. (Member NYSE, FINRA, SIPC and NFA), TradeStation Technologies, Inc., a trading software and subscription company, and TradeStation Europe Limited, a United Kingdom, FSA-authorized introducing brokerage firm. None of these companies provides trading or investment advice, recommendations or endorsements of any kind. The information transmitted is intended only for the person or entity to which it is addressed and may contain confidential and/or privileged material. Any review, retransmission, dissemination or other use of, or taking of any action in reliance upon, this information by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited. If you received this in error, please contact the sender and delete the material from any computer.