Am 14.07.2008 um 16:54 schrieb Dominic Espinosa:
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?
If you use Shout this is exactly how it is working.
- Bert -
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