Adaptive character generation and spatial expressiveness
Michael M. Cohen · 1994
Zebrackets is a system of meta-METAFONTs to generate semi-custom striated parenthetical delimiters on demand. Contextuahzed by a pseudo-environment in LQX, and invoked by an aliased pre-compiler, Zebrackets are nearly seamlessly invokable in a variety of modes, manually or automatically generated marked matching pairs of background, foreground, or hybrid delimiters, according to a unique index or depth in the expression stack, in 'demux,' unary, or binary encodings of nested associativity. Implemented as an active filter that re-presents textual information graphically, adaptive character generation can reflect an arbitrarily wide context, increasing the information density of textual presentation by reconsidering text as pictures and expanding the range of written spatial expression.