Squeak-dev/Squeak-web image v95-2

Lex Spoon lex at lexspoon.org
Mon Apr 9 21:23:50 UTC 2007


tim Rowledge <tim at rowledge.org> writes:
> Exactly; I certainly didn't intend to suggest "redefining _ and ^ in
> non-standard
> ways" and I don't think I saw anyone else do so. We have the option
> of using proper characters that are outside the narrow scope of mere
> ASCII to improve our system. I posit the we should so do.

As you know, this is the status quo in Squeak.  _ and ^ are left-arrow
and up-arrow in many Squeak fonts.  Changing these back to the normal
characters is IMHO an improvement for Squeak interop, and an
improvement in general.

You did propose a collection of rewrites that should happen as code
comes into and out of the system.  This is part of what I meant by
treating characters in non-standard ways.  Whether or not we switch to
Unicode, translating on file-in/file-out is problematic.  Just
consider cut and paste with Squeak workspaces.  Sometimes workspaces
hold code and sometimes they do not, so you cannot know whether or not
to apply the rewrite.  It is far nicer if you can treat the code as
normal text, and thus copy/paste it as is.


Even if we do switch to Unicode, there is a case for sticking with :=
and ^ instead of using Unicode arrow characters.  := and ^ are easy to
type, and they will work fine in every tool that processes text.  You
don't have to get into rewrites and pretty printers; you can just use
the text as it is.  That degree of interop is powerful for our users.


Lex




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