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P9420   M.G.J. van den Brand & E. Visser
        "From Box to TeX:  An algebraic approach to the construction of
        documentation tools"


We define a translation from an intermediate box language for pretty
printing to TeX. This translation can be used as a back-end for pretty
printers in documentation tools for programming languages. The translation
is formulated in an executable algebraic specification formalism. An
important aspect of the translation is the transformation of boxes
according to a set of equations. These equations preserve the text
formatting semantics of boxes which is also defined algebraically. New in
this approach is that algebraic transformations of box terms are used to
circumvent the limitations of the typesetter.

The TeX generator, which translates the box language to TeX code, is a
component of documentation tools generated for the programming environments
developed with the ASF+SDF meta-environment, but can also be used as a
separate tool. As a case study, the construction of a typesetter for the
process specification formalism PSF is shown.