In OutputForm there is a function width that returns the amount of space taken by some element of OutputForm when printed as ASCII. For example

)se ou alg on
 

)se ou tex off

sin x

   (1)  sin(x)

width((sin x)::OutputForm)$OutputForm

   The function width is not implemented in OutputForm .

However, the width for squares and fractions seems to be wrong:

x^2

         2
   (2)  x

width((x^2)::OutputForm)$OutputForm

   The function width is not implemented in OutputForm .

I would expect 2 here.

1/2

        1
   (3)  -
        2

width((1/2)::OutputForm)$OutputForm

   The function width is not implemented in OutputForm .

I would expect 1 here.

The function is unfortunately not implemented in SPAD but rather calls outformWidth coded in BOOT in the file i-output.boot.

It would be good to have a similar function for TeX output, by the way.

Width of output depends on formater. In case of formats such as TeX or MathML the actual typesetting happens outside FriCAS and we have no way to know true width. So width in OutputForm? is ill-defined and for this reason removed from FriCAS. Martin