Simple formatter and trying to create custom formatting style around code?

Question

I'm trying to create a custom, or modify the existing, method formatter to experiment with different styles of arranging code.

BISimpleFormatter is a subclass of RBProgramNodeVisitor so I plan to use something like that too.

As a generic starting point, how can I insert my own characters(spaces or tabs) before and after each code node?

Answer 1

Create a subclass of BISimpleFormatter. For every #visit<XYZ> method in the BISimpleFormatter implement in your class the same method by doing whatever pre-decoration you want, then call super visit<XYZ> and end with your post-decoration.

For instance,

MySpaciousFormatter could do something on the lines of

visitLiteralNode: aLiteralNode
  codeStream space.
  super visitLiteralNode: aLiteralNode.
  codeStream space

This way every time the formatter is about to print a LiteralNode it will put spaces around it. I'm sure you have much better ideas; I just wanted to give you a simple example.