Bert Freudenberg wrote:

> On Mon, 20 Dec 1999, Stephen Travis Pope wrote:
> 
>> With the new fonts, I believe it's finally time to do away with "_"
>> and use ":=" consistently for assignment.
> 
> I second this. We still could hack the pretty printer to display a left
> arrow, but the source should use ":=".
> 
> -Bert-

I'd like to voice the opposite opinion so that this isn't taken as the
general consensus. 

7-bit ascii is anachronistic. I'm looking forward to the unicode support
that was discussed at length earlier. Then I can finally code my methods in
hieroglyphics, and we'll finally reach the goal of iconic programming.

Seriously, I think the non-ascii characters are very valuable. In fact I've
been pondering about allowing operators to use symbols from other fonts.
Since the text fileout format relies on ascii one might use a
postscript/html-like translation scheme so that, say, an or symbol like 'V'
(a V b), might have the ascii representation of &or or something (as a poor
example). (Hmm, accidentally this scheme would allow us to free up ^ and _,
too.)

Remember, Squeak is about raising the upper limits of the field; it's not
about complying with the lower ones. (There's plenty of C and *nix/*nux and
CP/M derivatives and <x>MLs and TeX in use out there for those with a
conservative pink inclination.) How's that for flamebait, Steve?

Henrik 
(slightly agitated)