On Sun, Jul 20, 2003 at 03:02:28PM +0100, Phil Taylor wrote: > > >But I think we're going to have to deal with this at some point. > >We _are_ running out of characters, there are ambiguities which could be > >clarified by using a whole word, it would make the whole thing rather > >more accessible to less-techy readers. > >There's alway pre-processing, of course. "#define %%Title: T:" ... > > It doesn't solve your original problem though, unless the standard specifies > a standard field letter to which %%Copyright can be #defined.
Point, yes. #define %%Copyright: N:Copyright: I'm not actually reccomending this, you understand, just pointing out that it could be done, by anybody that wants word fields badly enough. > > I don't think we really are running out of field letters yet, since > most of the lower case letters are still available. We could certainly get by for a while, assuming we candecide what they should be used for. But one day we will run out, so why not be ready instead of being caught by suprise ? And the other points; it might be clearer and easier to read. Particularly, I'm getting unhappy about Jack's (??I think) mention of A: as Author (of words). Or, more particularly, I use A: heavily as Area, and am not comfortable, about 1) conflicting with other meanings (it's not the first time A: == Author has been mentioned) and 2) the issues that get raised by hierarchical data fields. In practice there's no problem to it (that I can see) that a little commonsense can't deal with, but it's not quite comfortable all the same. I could (maybe) invent something like "%%A:Sweden:J\"amtland", "%%A:England:Northwest", but these things are more useful if software understands them ... And then again, I tend to prefer single-character fields because it's less typing. -- Richard Robinson "The whole plan hinged upon the natural curiosity of potatoes" - S. Lem To subscribe/unsubscribe, point your browser to: http://www.tullochgorm.com/lists.html
