24 lines
1.2 KiB
Text
24 lines
1.2 KiB
Text
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Programming languages are limited to relatively few characters. As
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a result, combined character operators surfaced quite early, such
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as the widely used arrow (->), comprised of a hyphen and greater
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sign. It looks like an arrow if you know the analogy and squint a
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bit.
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Composite glyphs are problematic in languages such as Haskell which
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utilize these complicated operators (=> -< >>= etc.) extensively.
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The readability of such complex code improves with pretty printing.
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Academic articles featuring Haskell code often use lhs2tex to
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achieve an appealing rendering, but it is of no use when programming.
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Some Haskellers have resorted to Unicode symbols, which are valid
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in the ghc. However they are one-character-wide and therefore
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eye-strainingly small. Furthermore, when displayed as substitutes
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to the underlying multi-character representation, as vim2hs does,
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the characters go out of alignment.
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Hasklig solves the problem the way typographers have always solved
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ill-fitting characters which co-occur often: ligatures. The underlying
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code stays the same - only the representation changes. Not only
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can multi-character glyphs be rendered more vividly, other problematic
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things in monospaced fonts, such as spacing can be corrected.
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