A haskell library to serve charts via ghci.

> -- :set -package prettychart
> import Prettychart
> (sendChart, quitChartServer) <- startChartServer (Just "prettychart")

An example from chart-svg ...

> import Chart.Examples
> sendChart lineExample

... point your browser at localhost:9160 and you should see this:

Utilising -interactive-print, we can turn these protocols into a pretty printer for collections of numbers:

> printc = printChart False sendChart
> :t printc
> (Show a) => a -> IO ()
> :set -interactive-print printc
> [0..9]

A bar chart representing this list will be rendered in the browser, and should look like this:

... stop the server, and go back to normal.

> quitChartServer
> :set -interactive-print print

All of this can be automated by dropping the code below into a ghci.conf

-- :set -package prettychart
:{
:def! prettychart \_ -> pure $ unlines [
  "import Prettychart",
  "(sendChart, quitChartServer) <- startChartServer Nothing",
  "printc=printChart False sendChart",
  ":set -interactive-print printc"
  ]
:}

:{
:def! noprettychart \_ -> pure $ unlines [
  "quitChartServer",
  ":set -interactive-print print"
  ]
:}

:prettychart