Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question now Unicode

[Dan Espen]

Rusi <rustompmody@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 9:16:21 PM UTC+5:30, Dan Espen wrote:
>> Rusi  writes:
>> 
>> > On Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 8:22:28 PM UTC+5:30, Dan Espen wrote:
>> >> Rusi  writes:
>> >> 
>> >> > On a different note...
>> >> > For 50 years CS has been living in the impoverished world of ASCII.
>> >> > This makes people think CS and math are more far apart than they 
>> >> > essentially/really are.
>> >> >
>> >> > I wrote this as my wish for python:
>> >> > http://blog.languager.org/2014/04/unicoded-python.html
>> >> > Isn't it about time lisp also considered a similar line?
>> >> 
>> >> I can't type it, I sure don't want to see it in source code.
>> >
>> > Strange to see that comment on an emacs-list!
>> 
>> I've been using Emacs since the 70s.
>> 
>> > I guess the same comment would have been made 50 years ago when C came out
>> > and Fortran/Cobol programmers could not find lower case on card-punch 
>> > machines
>> >
>> > [There are things called input-methods in particular tex-input method]¹
>> >
>> >
>> > Yes, unicode has more mis-understandings than understanding (currently)
>> > See
>> >
>> > http://blog.languager.org/2015/02/universal-unicode.html for the plus
>> > http://blog.languager.org/2015/03/whimsical-unicode.html for the minus
>> >
>> >
>> > =========
>> > ¹ I prefer X-based input methods; eg after
>> > $ setxkbmap -layout "us,gr"  -option "grp:caps_toggle,grp_led:caps"
>> >
>> > the CAPSLOCK becomes a 'greeklock' ie after pressing CAPSLOCK
>> > abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
>> > produces
>> > αβψδεφγηιξκλμνοπ;ρστθωςχυζ
>> 
>> That's pretty neat.
>> But I don't know the Greek alphabet and if someone started sprinkling
>> Greek in my source code, I'd want a damn good explanation.
>
> Greek was given as an example
>
>> 
>> There are thousands of these crazy symbols and around 100 keys on my
>> keyboard.  Only a few of those keys have more than 1 label.
>
> 1 million+ codepoints
> Greater 100,000 in use

So, 100 keys and about a dozen distinct shift keys used one or 2 at a
time should just about cover it.

Putting anything useful on the key caps is not in the cards.

>> How am I supposed to remember how to type all this stuff?
>
> You are asking a rhetorical question...
>
> If you are asking genuinely:
> http://blog.languager.org/2015/01/unicode-and-universe.html
> explains what's wrong with sticking to the obsolete penury-of-ASCII
>
> http://blog.languager.org/2015/02/universal-unicode.html
> suggests that if mapping a million chars onto a 100-char keyboard looks like
> an unpleasant/unsolvable problem, which subsets may be worth considering

Obvious to me, allowing 100,000 characters into source code
is a really bad idea.

How many additional characters do you think a language should allow?

I ended up expending quite a bit of effort to get square brackets to
work right on an IBM mainframe.
The PL/I not sign and solid bar vs. broken bar still
cause problems.  Then I still run into this: ¢.

I have no idea how I'd deal with any significant number of new
characters.

-- 
Dan Espen