Construction of a WYSIWYG LaTeX Typesetting System Using Object-oriented Design

This paper reports the design of a sophisticated wysiwyg L a T E X-like typesetting system Vi e w T E X. Our approach is based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) user-interface paradigm, as originated from the Smalltalk community. According to the paradigm, the Vi e w T E X system is decomposed into the sub-editor (model) module, the redisplay (view) module, and the user-commands (controller) module. Each module is responsible for a diierent aspect of Vi e w T E X. Represented as separate objects, these modules cooperate by communicating via a controlled and structured pattern. Such decomposition facilitates encapsulation and code reuse. To demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, a prototype implementation of Vi e w T E X is constructed according to the design using C and Motif.