[m-dev.] Re: For review: Term display helper

[Peter Schachte]

On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Fergus Henderson wrote:

> For Ian and anyone else interested in this topic,
> see Philip Wadler's recent paper "A prettier printer".

I like the algebraic approach, but this technology is based in the teletype
age:  all fixed-height monospaced fonts.  In the day of bitmapped displays
and cheap ink-jet printers, this doesn't seem the right model.

I suggest taking a look at:

@Article{bra-eel-tosem-96,
  author =       "Mark Van Den Brand and Eelco Visser",
  title =        "Generation of Formatters for Context-free Languages",
  journal =      "ACM Trans. Software Eng. and Methodology",
  year =         1996,
  volume =       5,
  number =       1,
  pages =        "1--41",
}

for a very nice grammar-based approach to pretty printing.


-Peter Schachte
pets at cs.mu.OZ.AU
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~pets/
PGP key available on request