I think I usually agree with Lex, but this time I must say I do not.  C was 
breathtakingly good at interop as well, but at some point we saw that it was 
holding us back and moved on.  I feel it's the same with the ASCII set.

I haven't seen much pain in Smalltalk because of being tied to ASCII (though 
that doesn't mean it isn't there, just that we are good at working around 
it).  But one place that is showing it in a big way is Haskell [1].

I not sure what to do here, but there must be something.  Maybe do like 
laptops already do and have a "function" key that causes normal keys to do 
an alternative function (normally written in blue), e.g. holding down F2 and 
the L key could make a lambda symbol.  When a user presses the "function" 
key, we could have a little keyboard pop up to show what the symbols are 
since they wont be written on the keyboard.

[1] In Haskell one becomes aware of the limitations of using ASCII right 
away.  The compose symbol (normally a circle) is the period.  They decided 
to use the \ symbol for lambdas (!!!) since that was the closest graphic 
available.

>From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
>Reply-To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>To: The general-purpose Squeak developers 
>list<squeak-dev at lists.squeakfoundation.org>
>Subject: Re: Squeak-dev/Squeak-web image v95-2
>Date: Sat, 7 Apr 2007 18:29:25 +0200
>
>
>On Apr 7, 2007, at 15:45 , Lex Spoon wrote:
>
>>tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> writes:
>>>Make the parser accept the unicode leftarrow as assign; leave the
>>>':=' for backcompat.
>>>Make fileout to text convert leftaror to := for plausible human
>>>readability and ascii compat.
>>>Make filein convert := to leftarrow for aesthetic compat.
>>>Make a hotkey to insert leftarrow. Remember, the $= key is just a
>>>hotkey that is already set for you.
>>>Let people chose a suitable assign hotkey. Perhaps cmd-=? Perhaps  alt-
>>>\? I don't really care at this stage.
>>>Profit.
>>
>>
>>This approach will work.  However, we could instead not do all that,
>>and use pure ASCII.  ASCII is simple, sufficient, and breathtakingly
>>good at interop.
>
>The American SCII also breathtakingly sucks at expressiveness, even  for 
>many Americans. If you find its expressiveness sufficient, good  for you. 
>In most parts of the world it is not.
>
>Typewriters with their limited character set fortunately were only a  small 
>interlude in the history of typography. I'm glad in Smalltalk  we at least 
>use proportional fonts. Arbitrary punctuation like :=  really disturbs in 
>reading IMHO. I actually hope we're moving towards  higher typographical 
>standards (we at least should be able to do what  Fortress does for 
>example) and not falling back into the stone age of  computing.
>
>- Bert -
>
>
>

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