Morph>>Delete

smallsqueak.net smallsqueak at rogers.com
Fri Dec 5 19:37:02 UTC 2003


Re: Morph>>Delete
> ... but several folks have pointed out that even a slight deviation 
> from unadorned text is not supported by all email clients (sigh).

    What can we do when the 'Least Common Denominator' is also
    the most common (sigh).

    Only if we strive for the "Largest Common Denominator" then
    even the sky is not the limit ;-)

    Cheers,

    PhiHo.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Alan Kay 
  To: The general-purpose Squeak developerslist 
  Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 4:52 PM
  Subject: Re: Morph>>Delete


  Lots of appearance things were nicer before the Smalltalk-80 release efforts. I wasn't there at the time, but I think they decided (probably rightly) to use the existing character set in the outside world. And, today, it would be nice to do something like your suggestion (maybe a different one) and many other cosmetic possibilities, but several folks have pointed out that even a slight deviation from unadorned text is not supported by all email clients (sigh).


  Cheers,


  Alan


  -----


  At 4:30 PM -0800 12/4/03, Andrew P. Black wrote:
      Aaron J Reichow wrote:
      >
      > > > 2. The format for specifying a message is Class>>#message ; that is your
      > > > message should have read Morph>>#delete.
      > >
      > > Really?  I use #delete to talk about the message, but Morph>>delete to
      > > talk about a particular method.
      >
      > The convention is to use the #.  It's kind of neat actually-  do a
      > print-it on "Morph>>#delete" in a workspace- the CompiledMethod for that
      > method is returned.  #delete can be passed (a symbol), and delete cannot.

      Yes, "Morph>>#delete" is a valid Smalltalk expression and
      "Morph>>delete" is not.


    I've always found the # symbol to be a blot on the otherwise elegant syntax of Smalltalk.  Its a bit surprising to me that Smalltalk didn't adopt a different convention, such as typing all symbols in bold face.  delete would be an identifier reference, whereas delete would be a symbol, and
            myMorph delete
    would send the message delete to the object bound to myMorph.


    However, I'm about 25 years too late in proposing this, so I don't expect that it will be adopted real soon now.


            Andrew




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