On 4-Feb-08, at 5:48 PM, Paul D. Fernhout wrote:

> tim Rowledge wrote:
>> Exactly. And it's about time we used unicode properly and had the
>> appropriate char for our assignment. This ':=" crap is just vile.  
>> What
>> is this, Pascal?
>>
>> I quite like the leftwards sqiggle arrow"⇜" Unicode 21DC and RTF8  
>> E2 87
>> 9C but even plain boring  ← Leftwards Arrow unicode 2190 would be  
>> ok.
>> And how about ⤴ arrow pointing rightwards then curving upwards  
>> unicode
>> 2934 for return?
>
> I like Unicode, but if you're not joking, consider how hard are  
> Unicode
> characters to type for a commonly used expression on a common  
> keyboard?
It's exactly as hard as turning any other keystroke into any other  
character in the text stream. We could use any key input from cmd-g  
(which IIRC VW used to make the assign some years ago) to alt-_ to cmd- 
alt-ctl-shift-meta2-RMS  - this time to get an assign instead of the  
ascii portrait I mentioned in another thread. Personally I'd map plain  
shift-- (ie underscore) since  
underscores_have_no_place_in_variable_names. Similarly I'd use  
ordinary ^ for return on the keyboard.

I really don't care whether source is readable in non-Smalltalk  
applications any more than it annoys me that I can't read jpegs as  
text. The furthest I'd be inclined to go is to use xml as a transfer  
encoding.

tim
--
tim Rowledge; tim at rowledge.org; http://www.rowledge.org/tim
Hackers have kernel knowledge.