Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote:
> Sat, 9 Oct 1999 12:42:20 +1300, Brian Boutel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> pisze:
>
> > Be careful. '<-' is two symbols. Replacing it by one symbol can change the
> > semantics of a program by affecting layout.
>
> No, because only the indent before the first non-whitespace character
> in a line matters. Haskell programs can be typeset even in proportional
> font as long as indents have correct relationships between their
> lengths.
You must be using a different Haskell than I am. :-)
Consider these two fragments:
a = x + y where x = 1
y = 1
vs.
a = x ++ y where x = 1
y = 1
They have very different syntactical meaning.
> > If the supply of suitable Ascii symbols seems inadequate, remember
> > that Haskell uses Unicode. There is no reason to limit symbols to
> > those in the Ascii set.
>
> Yes. Unfortunately under Linux (and probably many other systems)
> it is not easy to use Unicode yet, because of lack of text editors
> and only partial support from the system (e.g. locale is going to
> support UTF-8 in the near future, ncurses does not support UTF-8).
It's not hard to find a text editor, use w.g. wily. It's widely available.
It can be hard to find support for your favourite editor though.
> But when Unicode finally comes... How should Haskell's textfile IO
> work? And FFI? I'm sure most people will want to use not only Unicode
> and I'm afraid many people would treat Haskell as broken when it does
> not output non-UTF8 8bit characters in source strings without a change.
These are good questions, and we need to start using Unicode to iron out any
wrinkles that are left in Haskell.
> Haskell standard speaks nothing about UTF-8, but it's about the only
> sensible way of exchange between internal Unicode and external 8bit
> streams, and AFAIK it will be / is used in many systems as external
> representation.
Well, some Haskell implementations come with UTF-8 conversion functions.
--
-- Lennart
