I should be be on John Walker's side if 'z/OS' were telling him that he may no longer write his routines in headlines. As it is, what he appears to be saying is that I must write mine in headlines too; and I am unsympathetic, even hostile to that notion.
He is and should be free to continue what he has always done, but not to impose his views upon others. There is, however, a larger issue here. Traditional all-majuscules source programs have two essential characteristics: They reflect now irrelevant, circa-1956 hardware technology; and they have a strong, all the stronger for being implicit and unexamined, anglophone bias. Consider the lines from José Camargo Caïn a été humilié par Dieu, et il tue son frère parce qu'il est dans l'incapacité de tuer Dieu. Rendered in majuscules without disacritical marks as CAIN A ETE HUMILIE PAR DIEU, ET IL TUE SON FRERE PARCE QU'IL EST DANS L'INCAPACITE DE TUER DIEU. it is, for a francophone, defaced. I look forward to the time when we shall be able to write source programs in mixed-case Unicode. Bertrand Russell once observed that if professional football (soccer) players came to be oppressed, he would of course come to their defense, diligently if not with great zeal. My view of Mr. Walker's problem is much the same. John Gilmore, Ashland, MA 01721 - USA
