> John Cowan scripsit: >> Paul Schlie scripsit: >> I don't believe [...] that scheme programs should be allowed to be >> formulated from anything other than the ASCII character alphabet >> as this restriction helps keep the core language implementation >> simple and encourages the development of more uniformly legible >> source code, as opposed to programs utilizing arbitrary alphabets). > > Uniformly legible to whom? If Scheme programs are limited to ASCII, > they are also implicitly limited to those who read and write American > English. I am told that one of the early attractions of Java in Japan > was the ability to write programs with identifiers that were meaningful > in Japanese, thus liberating Japanese programmers from the burden of > deciphering either English or their own language in transliteration.
- I understand the sentiment; however the facts are that differing languages/dialects divide communities, they don't unite them; as the lack of a common means of expression inhibit the sharing of information, conducting commerce, etc.; thereby for good or bad, as world's most broadly adopted language (even if only secondary) is English for just these reasons; it seems fairly clear that adopting a facility which in effect enables a community to diverge from such a common language/dialect is actually most likely counter productive; in my opinion, attempting to learn from history. However I see no reason why such a standard would prohibit an implementation's reader/parser from being extended to enable it to dynamically transliterate identifiers expressed in an arbitrary alphabet to correspondingly unique ASCII identifier strings, which may be then read/parsed generically; in fact it would seem that if a unicode/text manipulation library were defined, and the logical port from which REPL sources/sinks i/o, such an extension could be invoked and encapsulated within an optional library, without having to increase the size or complexity of the core language/environment. (I realize the subject is contentious and likely not worth further debate, especially as this is just my opinion and I have nothing more to add) _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
