Jim W:Then using a fixed width font, such as Courier New would work great for that.
Although Courier New has come with Windows since forever, that font's not redistributable, even as a spritefont. I doubt Microsoft would really care about some extremely low key roguelike, but he might as well do it legit with a properly licenced font.
I'd say that outputting strings to the console is the only real way to do an ascii roguelike, anyhow, and wouldn't even bother with textures.