On Tue, Jul 15, 2008 at 11:40:58AM +1200, Michael van der Gulik wrote: > On Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:20:25 -0400 > Dominic Espinosa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Hello, > > > > I've experimented with Squeak a bit, and have also seen the debate on > > the assignment symbols and how to handle the left-arrow, ':=', and > > underscore at http://wiki.squeak.org/squeak/5751. However, I want to use > > the left-arrow in my code. Is this possible? It seems like translation > > from ':=' to left-arrow and vice-versa should be straightforward > > (indeed, a sed script could do it). > > > I think that most people agree that the := should be used instead of a left > arrow in code.
I can understand a certain preference for ':=' over left-arrow, but this is 2008. = ) I don't know why we should stick with ASCII all the time. Haskell, for instance, would look a lot nicer with arrow glyphs, lambda, and a few other symbols. Since ':=' and left-arrow both just mean 'assign' in this circumstance, why not let it be displayed as one or the other according to preference? > To use the left arrow, get a fine-tipped permanent marker and very > carefully draw an arrow head on the '_' key on your keyboard. Then, > you can use this key for when you want a left arrow in your code. You > may need to choose a font that has a left arrow in it as well. > > If you want to get fancy (and I encourage you to do so for education's > sake :-) ), you could try mapping the underscore key to output a left > arrow character (←, Unicode 0x2190) using whatever your operating > system provides, and then modify the Squeak compiler to use that for > modification. Indeed, using '_' for assignment seems repugnant to a lot of people. Some of the debate in the previous swiki link focused on this aspect, and the issues in having '_' have such a non-standard meaning in Squeak, as well as the need to use '_' in circumstances other than assignment. Maybe left-arrow could be internally represented as ':=', filed-out as ':=', etc, but displayed as left-arrow according to preferences. Additionally, a key-binding could be used for inserting the left-arrow while typing. I'm not sure what kinds of issues this would raise in how source code is represented; I recall someone saying that the representation would have to change significantly for this to work. But perhaps there's an easy way to do it? Thanks again. _______________________________________________ Beginners mailing list [email protected] http://lists.squeakfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/beginners
