On Feb 21, Guillermo J. Rozas wrote:
>
> Would you argue that an italic type face would make the symbol
> distinct?
I can't argue for Shiro, but I'd definitely argue for a distinct
symbol if the source file has different bits. But hey, it already
works:
> (eq? 'foo '<i>foo</i>)
#f
> > Most coded character set draws a line between characters and glyphs.
> > Because we need to, even if the exact placement of the line is
> > arbitrary, right?
>
> It is arbitrary, and hence there is no reason to conform to what
> many other programming languages have done, when English is not that
> way, nor are the two most commonly used file systems.
>
> I'd rather conform to what ordinary people are used to than what to
> programmers in other languages are used.
The "English" and the "what ordinary people are used to" arguments
only takes this back to the starting point.
> > I thought we were talking where to draw a line in a continuous
> > spectrum, considering technical merits and disadvantages of
> > various choices.
>
> If RSR6 had been inventing a language from scratch, they could have
> made an arbitrary choice. I might have liked it or disliked it, but
> I wasn't involved, so it was their right.
>
> But it is called 'Scheme', and that means a tradition worth
> preserving.
>
> Case insensitivity is part of that tradition, [...]
I don't know what turned you on to Scheme (or what made you leave it),
but for me it definitely was not the fact that it was
case-insensitive.
> It's not as if Scheme conforms in most other ways:
> - prefix notation with parentheses in precise positions (not
> optional, nor can redundant ones added)
> - types associated with the contents of variables, and not with the
> variables
> - function calls and recursion as the primary control constructs
> - etc.
All of these are good points for Scheme, but completely unrelated to
the case issue. If you want to be a non-conformist for the sake of
non-conformism then I'm sure that there is plenty that could be done
for the language in that direction.
> Conforming in this way seems pointless, and, again, it conforms in
> ways that programmers in other programming languages expect, not in
> ways that ordinary users expect.
So on one hand you argue for case-insensitivity because it's "what
ordinary people are used to", and on the other you argue about for
case insensitivity because it doesn't conforms to what "programmers in
other programming languages expect"? I take the last part as much
more important when it comes to identifiers -- their syntax is not
something that should "leak" out to the end user in any way, so "what
ordinary people are used to" is a much weaker argument than "what
ordinary programmers are used to".
On Feb 21, Guillermo J. Rozas wrote:
>
> And with respect to () vs. #f, the jury is still out.
[I'm glad I didn't drink anything hot when I read this.]
--
((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay:
http://www.barzilay.org/ Maze is Life!
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