[rfe] add pPrintCompact

[juhp]

As originally mentioned in #93 it would be convenient if Text.Pretty.Simple provided:

pPrintCompact = 
  pPrintOpt CheckColorTty (defaultOutputOptionsDarkBg {outputOptionsCompact = True, 
                                                       outputOptionsCompactParens = True})

and I suppose correspondingly:

pPrintCompactLightBg = 
  pPrintOpt CheckColorTty (defaultOutputOptionsLightBg {outputOptionsCompact = True, 
                                                        outputOptionsCompactParens = True})

[cdepillabout]

I'm not necessarily against this, but one problem with adding functions with different features to Text.Pretty.Simple is that we end up with a combinatorial explosion of functions.

Currently, Text.Pretty.Simple has functions with these different features:

• taking different types of inputs (pPrint that takes anything Showable, pPrintString that takes a String that has already been shown, etc)
• using different types of outputs: taking a handle, force printing to stdout, or printing to Text (pPrint vs pHPrint vs pShow)
• whether or not to print to a dark background, light backgrount, or not use color (pPrint / pPrintDarkBg vs. pPrintLightBg vs. pPrintNoColor)
• whether or not to take options for changing how the output looks (pPrint vs. pPrintOpt)

Even for this existing functionality, I don't think we have all proper combinations of each of these features.

If we added another feature to this matrix (whether or not to print compact), it would cause a bunch of additional functions that need to be added to Text.Pretty.Simple if we want to properly provide all combinations of features.

Like I said above, I'm not necessarily against providing a compact version of all these functions, but there are a couple things to think about:

• Would enough users benefit from this? I'd like at least a few more people to reply to this issue and say "I absolutely can't live without this" before adding something like this.

• Would it be possible to just change the default output format to compact? Is there anyone that absolutely hates compact?

• Would we be able to compromise and add pPrintCompact, but not add any other combinations? Would this annoy users? (In practice, which features/functions from Text.Pretty.Simple are the most used?)

• We haven't done it up until now, but we would also create additional modules to help with this complexity. We could have modules like Text.Pretty.Simple.Dark.NonCompact, Text.Pretty.Simple.Light.Compact, etc.

[juhp]

Would it be possible to just change the default output format to compact? Is there anyone that absolutely hates compact?

This would be my personal vote :+1: I dunno why it isn't default already :-)

[georgefst]

Would it be possible to just change the default output format to compact? Is there anyone that absolutely hates compact?

I wouldn't be comfortable with that. It's a fairly recently-added feature, which isn't that well-tested, and has weird behaviour in some cases right now: #84.