On 01 June 2002, Fran?ois Pinard said:
One thing that I would love to have available in Python is a function able to wrap text using Knuth's filling algorithm. GNU `fmt' does it, and it is _so_ better than dumb refilling, in my eyes at least, that I managed so Emacs own filling algorithm is short-circuited with an external call (I do not mind the small fraction of a second it takes).
Damn, I had no idea there was a body of computer science (however small) devoted to the art of filling text. Trust Knuth to be there first. Do you have a reference for this algorithm apart from GNU fmt's source code? Google'ing for "knuth text fill algorithm" was unhelpful, ditto with s/fill/wrap/. Anyways, despite being warned just today on the conceptual/philosophical danger of classes whose names end in "-er" [1], I'm leaning towards a TextWrapper class, so that everyone may impose their desires through subclassing. I'll start with my simple naive text-wrapping algorithm, and then we can see who wants to contribute fancy/clever algorithms to the pot.
Also, is there some existing module in which `wraptext' would fit nicely? That might be better than creating a new module for not many functions.
Not if it grows to accomodate Optik/OptionParser, Mailman, regrtest, etc. Greg [1] objects should *be*, not *do*, and class names like HelpFormatter and TextWrapper are impositions of procedural abstraction onto OOP. It's something to be aware of, but still a useful idiom (IMHO). -- Greg Ward - Unix geek gward@python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it.