Alpheus Madsen: > I have an odd suggestion for a naming convention for these things: call them > "texprs", with submodules "curly-texprs", "whitespace-texprs", and > "function-texprs". (I dislike the name "modern-expressions" because standard > functional notation is rather old, which is what makes it seem so natural.)
Ah! Weird as it may seem, I saw this message out-of-order, so I didn't know where the "texpr" came from in the later reply (I figured it was some private email). > There are several reasons why I want to call these things "t-exprs". > First, "t" comes after "s" in the alphabet, so it seems natural to call an > augmentation, and potentially a second-generation, of s-exprs "t-exprs".... Fair enough. > Second, I'd like to create a "cleaned up" version of Common Lisp someday, > starting with "t-exprs"; I'd like to call the language "Treehouse" to give it > an interesting name, and to emphasise the fact that its basic data structure > is trees, made out of lists. (The motivation behind this is the article "The > Nature of Lisp", http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html, as well as a > desire to find a "hip" name for the language--everyone likes treehouses!) > Third, "s-exprs" is short for "symbolic expressions"; "m-exprs" is short for > "meta expressions"; when we call these things "sweet-expressions", what's an > appropriate abbreviation? Perhaps "sw-exprs" would do, or just "w-exprs", or > even "t-exprs" for "sweeT-EXPRessions". I don't know how many times I wish I > could have said "t-exprs" instead of "sweet-expressions" in an e-mail. > As an observation, since the goal is for these things to be readable, it > wouldn't hurt to call them "r-exprs", short for "readable expressions"; this > last name would also fit nicely in the alphabet scheme, even though "R" comes > before "S". (And yes, that has a lot of tradition in mathematics, as > well--usually when you run out of letters.) Having said that, I'm still > partial to the term "t-exprs". I'll have to think about this. We need names for: * The *set* of notations (currently "readable" notations) * Each of the three tiers (currently curly infix, modern expressions, sweet expressions). One problem I see is that one-letter names (like "c-expressions" for curly infix, "m-expressions" for modern expressions, and "t-expressions" for sweet expressions) don't really have the same "punch". I like the word "modern" expressions because who wants to AVOID doing things the "modern" way? And wouldn't you want to use a "sweet" notation? Just letters don't do that. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. What names would you propose for all 4 cases, and why? --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Live Security Virtual Conference Exclusive live event will cover all the ways today's security and threat landscape has changed and how IT managers can respond. Discussions will include endpoint security, mobile security and the latest in malware threats. http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sfrnl04242012/114/50122263/ _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
