[Cryptography Team] re: removing underscores

[Bill Schwab]

Craig,

================================
> I really don't understand.. the argument that they are aesthetically
> displeasing.  They seem reasonable to me.

     As I understand it, the underscore character is considered
aesthetically displeasing because it's a typewriter hack, intended for
underlining things (typing other characters, moving the carriage
backward, and overtyping some underscores). It's considered ugly because
it's an anachronism, and the subsequent hack of separating tokens in a
human's mind within what a machine considers a single token is not
sufficient to redeem it (and that the hack of using it for assignment is
more worthwhile, mostly because it is displayed as something else).

     For the sake of good taste and tact I will refrain from divulging
my own personal opinion about it. ;)
================================

My intent here is not to start a flame war, but I find the aesthetic
line of reasoning to be completely irrelevant.  Why should your sense of
aesthetics have anything to do with my efficiency?  Squeak's objections
to underscores are becoming ever more elective.  I submit that the "all
but first character" fix should have been included in the mainstream
years ago.

Bill




Wilhelm K. Schwab, Ph.D.
University of Florida
Department of Anesthesiology
PO Box 100254
Gainesville, FL 32610-0254

Email: bills at anest4.anest.ufl.edu
Tel: (352) 846-1285
FAX: (352) 392-7029