Understanding default formatting behavior

One of Polyglot Notebook’s best features for rapid development and prototyping is its ability to display objects below a cell. Objects are displayed if you call the Display extension method, available for every object, or end a cell with a variable declaration.

Polyglot Notebooks uses a series of formatters to determine how each object is represented in the notebook when displayed in this matter.

Objects can be displayed in a variety of ways, but each formatting method outputs objects in a specific MIME type.

Supported MIME types in Polyglot Notebooks include the following:

• text/plain: Plain text output with no formatting
• text/html: HTML output rendered as a fragment of a web page
• application/json: JSON output to render complex objects

The default behavior of Polyglot Notebooks is to show plain text values for simple variables, such as strings and integers.

For complex objects, Polyglot Notebooks typically...