I think that's a good point and is probably the way it should be done ....

Cheers,

Alan

------

At 10:23 AM -0400 4/23/01, Alan Knight wrote:
>Using left-arrow is one issue, but the way it's done also steals a 
>character from the character set, and more importantly, from the 
>keyboard. There's no <- key on a keyboard (Well, actually there is. 
>Perhaps we should use that if we're going to free ourselves of the 
>constraints of mainstream computing conventions. It's easier to 
>reach than shift-hyphen, too).
>
>So to me, while _, especially in comments or C callouts, is an 
>issue, it's QWERTY of the moment that is a bigger problem than ASCII 
>of the 70's. After all, it's not like modern Smalltalks can't 
>display a left-arrow, they just don't replace an existing ASCII 
>character with it.
>
>At 04:51 AM 4/23/2001 -0800, Alan Kay wrote:
>>Just for the record, "<-" came first. SInce we controlled all at 
>>PARC in the early 70s and no one liked ":=" as an assignment token 
>>(the "=" is not a good sign to have here), the early PARC languages 
>>all used the "<-" character. Both the screen and printing fonts 
>>that we made had this character. I was gone from PARC by the final 
>>stages of Smalltalk-80, but I remember others mentioning the long 
>>fight over whether they should capituate to the Standard 7-bit 
>>ASCII of the late 70s. Apparently, they did.
>>
>>Cheers,
>>
>>Alan
>>
>>
>>
>>At 11:40 AM +0100 4/23/01, John Hinsley wrote:
>>>Stephane Ducasse wrote:
>>>>
>>>>  Hi
>>>>
>>>>  I'm really wondering why Squeak code continues to have _
>>>>  instead of using :=.
>>>
>>>I actually prefer it! I find := pretty awkward to type (so easy to leave
>>>the shift key up for too long). And if you go /:= you end up with
>>>Adolph!
>>>
>>>I think we should ask the VW developers (politely, but firmly) to add _
>>>as an alternative.
>>>
>>>Cheers
>>>
>>>John
>>>
>>>--
>>>******************************************************************************
>>>Marx: "Why do Anarchists only drink herbal tea?"
>>>Proudhon: "Because all proper tea is theft."
>>>******************************************************************************
>>
>>--
>>Alan Knight [|], Cincom Smalltalk Development
>>knight at acm.org
>>aknight at cincom.com
>>http://www.cincom.com/scripts/smalltalk.exe/downloads/index.asp