Many programming problems call for turning geometrical thoughts into code: tables, hierarchical structures, nests of objects, trees, forests, graphs, and so on. Linear text does not do justice to such thoughts. But, it has been the dominant programming medium for the past and will remain so for the foreseeable future. This paper proposes a novel mechanism for conveniently extending textual programming languages with problem-specific visual syntax. It argues the necessity of this language feature, demonstrates the feasibility with a robust prototype, and sketches a design plan for adapting the idea to other languages.

中文翻译：

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向文本代码添加交互式视觉语法

许多编程问题需要将几何思想转化为代码：表格、层次结构、对象嵌套、树木、森林、图形等等。线性文本对这种想法并不公平。但是，它在过去一直是占主导地位的编程媒体，并且在可预见的未来仍将如此。本文提出了一种新颖的机制，可以方便地扩展具有特定问题的视觉语法的文本编程语言。它论证了这种语言特性的必要性，用一个健壮的原型证明了可行性，并草拟了一个设计计划，使这个想法适应其他语言。