Lots of appearance things were nicer before the Smalltalk-80 release 
efforts. I wasn't there at the time, but I think they decided 
(probably rightly) to use the existing character set in the outside 
world. And, today, it would be nice to do something like your 
suggestion (maybe a different one) and many other cosmetic 
possibilities, but several folks have pointed out that even a slight 
deviation from unadorned text is not supported by all email clients 
(sigh).

Cheers,

Alan

-----

At 4:30 PM -0800 12/4/03, Andrew P. Black wrote:
>>Aaron J Reichow wrote:
>>>
>>>  > > 2. The format for specifying a message is Class>>#message ; 
>>>that is your
>>>  > > message should have read Morph>>#delete.
>>>  >
>>>  > Really?  I use #delete to talk about the message, but Morph>>delete to
>>>  > talk about a particular method.
>>>
>>>  The convention is to use the #.  It's kind of neat actually-  do a
>>>  print-it on "Morph>>#delete" in a workspace- the CompiledMethod for that
>>>  method is returned.  #delete can be passed (a symbol), and delete cannot.
>>
>>Yes, "Morph>>#delete" is a valid Smalltalk expression and
>>"Morph>>delete" is not.
>
>I've always found the # symbol to be a blot on the otherwise elegant 
>syntax of Smalltalk.  Its a bit surprising to me that Smalltalk 
>didn't adopt a different convention, such as typing all symbols in 
>bold face.  delete would be an identifier reference, whereas delete 
>would be a symbol, and
>  	myMorph delete
>would send the message delete to the object bound to myMorph.
>
>However, I'm about 25 years too late in proposing this, so I don't 
>expect that it will be adopted real soon now.
>
>	Andrew


-- 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/pipermail/squeak-dev/attachments/20031204/42bb1e99/attachment.htm