--- Jesper Harder <harder@ifa.au.dk> wrote:
> Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
>
> > Andrey G. Grozin wrote:
> >
> >> First, high-quality typesetting of formulae is not a trivial
> >> problem. Just have a look at the sizes of programs that can do it
> >> well: TeX, lout, TeXmacs.
> >
> > Besides which, TeX (I don't know about the others) doesn't solve
> the
> > problem of expressions that are too long. I have heard about but
> not
> > tried a latex macro package that supposedly does this, but frankly
> I
> > would be surprised if it works. Maxima used to (probably still
> does)
> > change
> >
> > a+b+c
> > -----
> > d+e+f ....
> >
> > to
> > (a+b+c)/(d+e+f)..
> > as the numerator and denominator grow. Is the Latex macro clever
> > enough for this?
>
> No, it isn't that clever. In general, the package deals quite well
> with
> breaking at binary relations, like + and -, but doesn't know how to
> deal
> with very wide fractions, superscripts, subscripts etc. I think the
> same
> applies to TeXmacs.
I'm not sure if I know of ANY system that can do really well at that -
certainly in my experience Mathematica can not. Also, would we
sometimes the long form, say on a window which can use a scrolled
display to fit it, and then break it up for printing, or would we want
it to always be broken up? There may be cases were the expression
which is too large to print is the desired one for seeing a property
visually. What could be done, anyway, even from a theory standpoint?
Or, to pose the question more properly, what would the ideal behavior
of a proper package to handle the general problem of overly long lines?
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