Ralf Hemmecke wrote:
>
> For debugging, it's always good to be able to have access to underlying
> printing mechanism, but I think it shouldn't be encouraged to use such
> things in ordinary user programs.
>
> This is, maybe, a follow-up of my critisism of OutputForm and its
> unclear definition.
>
> In particular output: OutputForm -> Void from OutputPackage is used in
> section 6.19 in the AXIOM book to nicely format the Pascal triangle.
>
> When I first read this some 15 years ago, I liked being able to format
> in such a form. Now, however, I'm totally against using
> output$OutputPackage in such a place.
<snip>
> Interestingly the output, doesn't look symmetric. But this comes from
> the fact that "center" is computed in OutputForm and not just a tag that
> let's the formatter decide how to center the output. That's currently
> wrong! And should eventually also be fixed. But currently I don't want
> to change OutputForm.
>
> Opinions?
1) I feel that current way of formatting requires too much
work for casual use. It is OK for library, but a lot
of programs (especialy .input files) is run-once, and
we need something easier.
2) output$OutputPackage is a step towards easier output
formatting, but IMO we need to do much more.
3) I am not sure how far we should go with formatting
capabilities (in particular, if OutputForm is supposed
to contain yet another page description langage), but
_if_ we include such things like 'center' then all
formatters should make best effort to implement it.
4) I feel that we need examples of various ways of generating
output in the manual. In particular we need example
of 'output$OutputPackage'. I would avoid it in Pascal
example, because of 'center' problem.
--
Waldek Hebisch
[email protected]
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