Have there been similar approaches to this style of formatting?

Should the division by 2 on line 106 be indented less? Just to make sure I'm following.

I put the line 106 division centered between the two parenthetically-cyan elements

i understand the limit of text editor means you cant have the

r

block actually parallel to the

l

block for the addition, but i'd find it more readable if lines 102/103/104 were atleast merged to give as much parallelism to the addition as possible? or put a different way, i'm taking it that the formatting of the division on new lines helps convey meaning by reference to traditional mathematic formatting... whereas, what meaning is being conveyed by putting the addition elements on new lines?

@Gray ohh, I see. Thanks. That makes sense and also seems like the major drawback here. (I know this isn't an answer to your question.)

The rationale for 102-104 not merging is that I wanted each line to have only a single scale of operation — putting the left denominator on the same line as the right numerator reduces the negative space that assists the parsing of each chunk as visually separate

You could try a commented out horizontal divider maybe e.g.

/**----------------**//

This earliest example of using vertical spacing to format maths of which I'm aware was done on punch cards in 1978: http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/pdf/intermetrics/programming_in_hal-s.pdf