From: ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de   
      
   Anthk NM  wrote or quoted:   
   >There's the aamath package for Unix where you can display formulae   
   >as ASCII ART:   
   >https://github.com/gchudnov/aamath   
   >Check the documentation; it has an option to shrink the radicals.   
      
     Ah, thanks for the info!   
      
     I'm actually planning to write something like that myself.   
      
     As a quick little trial run, I recently "implemented square roots".   
      
     You can see three sample outputs here:   
      
    .-   
   \|x   
      
    .---   
   \|x+y   
      
    .-   
    |x   
    |-   
   \|y   
      
     A rectangular area made of characters is described by a "box":   
      
   class Box:   
       __slots__=["content","width","origin","baseline"]   
       def __init__( self, content, width, baseline ):   
           self.content=content   
           self.width=width   
           self.baseline=baseline   
           return   
       def __str__( self ):   
           return "\n".join(self.content)   
      
     . The root class only has one method, "render_ascii_display",   
     which generates a square root sign:   
      
   class Sqrt:   
       def render_ascii_display( self, operand ):   
      
           # add bar above   
           content=["-" * operand_box.width]+operand_box.content   
      
           new_content = []   
      
           # add bar left   
           for i, line in enumerate( content ):   
               if i == 0:   
                   prefix = " ."   
               elif i == len( content )-1:   
                   prefix = "\|"   
               else:   
                   prefix = " |"   
               new_content.append( prefix + line )   
      
           content = new_content   
      
           bar_box = Box(content, 2+operand_box.width,operand_box.baseline)   
      
           return bar_box   
      
     . Basically, it draws a line over the operand and another   
     one to its left, with the top and bottom edges ending in   
     " ." and "\|" to form a square root sign.   
      
     Since the classes for variables, sums, and quotients aren't   
     written yet, those operands are manually formatted in the   
     main program for now:   
      
   sqrt = Sqrt()   
   operand_box = Box( ["x"], 1, 0 )   
   print(sqrt.render_ascii_display(operand_box))   
   print()   
   operand_box = Box( ["x+y"], 3, 0 )   
   print(sqrt.render_ascii_display(operand_box))   
   print()   
   operand_box = Box( ["x","-","y"], 1, 1 )   
   print(sqrt.render_ascii_display(operand_box))   
   print()   
      
     . The output was shown above near the top of this post.   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)