On Wed, 20 Nov 2002 11:36:49 -0500 "Bill Schwab" <schwabw at sprynet.com> wrote:
>---------------------------------
>Just curious, but do you know how easy this would be to fix for your 
>own use? You want to see underscores rather than an arrow? Just do it. 
>---------------------------------
>
>Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see how a one-line change is 
>going to correct the real problem, which is that $_ appears in the 
>sources as an assignment.  Put another way, is there an easy way to tell 
>which underscores to show as an arrow (or promote to :=) and which to 
>leave alone?  I'm not the first to mention this, and arguments always 
>come down to aesthetics, not how easy it would be to correct.

Depending on the precise problem you want to solve, I think there are several possible solutions:

- Change the glyph in all fonts to look like an underscore. Train yourself to remember "the underscore is a valid assignment operator", which probably isn't that hard.
- Change only some fonts. Use un-modified fonts where Smalltalk code is likely (like a browser window). Use the modified ones where seeing the underscore is important, like a list of file names, maybe. 
- Use a pretty-printer to convert all assignment operators to your favorite whenever you view a method. You just need to tweak AssignmentNode>>printOn:indent: to get the desired effect.
- A variation on the above: do it once for every method in the system and save the result.

>IMHO, this is one of those "little things" that helps people inclined to 
>dismiss Smalltalk quite happy.  I urge the community to not make it so 
>easy for them (and therefore more difficult no those trying to expand 
>Smalltalk's use).

Do you actually know some of these people? If they walk away from Squeak because they don't like the look of our underscores, I wonder just how useful they would be in the long run.

Cheers,
Bob