@staticmethod
def normalize_cell(cell, col_width):
    """
        Given the text for a cell create a fixed length string to fit a column with width col_width.
        This is mostly an internal helper function  used by RSTTable.render but can be useful
        otherwise as well.

        :param cell: String with the text content for the cell
        :param col_width: Target width for the column
        :return: cell text string padded with spaces to fit the column width
        """
    return ' ' + cell + (col_width - len(cell) + 1) * ' '
