On 12/5/07, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
>
> On Wed, 5 Dec 2007, Bill Page wrote:
>
> |
> | On 12/5/07, Gabriel Dos Reis wrote:
> | >
> | > But, in this specific case, the layout rule in the Spad
> | > Syntax amounts to nothing close to 2 dimension. It is
> | > purely a 1-dimensional thing.
> |
> | ? But you said that it involved "lining up" - something that is
> | inherently at least 2 dimensional.
>
> No, it isn't inherently 2-dimensional. What it means is that
> one starts a newline (in the 1-dimensional stream of characters),
> leave as much blank as on at the start of the previous line
> and continue.
How do you measure blank? How do you define start? I know there are
algorithms (the ones I referred to as "serializations") that do this
by looking for markers (e.g. \n) and counting ' ' and/or \t, but I
think it is much easier to admit that when we see this on a page or on
the screen it is 2-dimensional. Unless I have a severe problem with my
vision (tunnel vision) I see this all at once as simple two
dimensional geometrical arrangement (a "curve" in 2-d space):
x
x
x
x
x
x
>
> In a 2-dimensional setting, I go in all planar directions for
> writing my program -- think handwriting, ascii art output.
>
Yes this is possible but not necessary for representing conventional
program code.
> |
> | > There isn't even anything that I would consider
> | > `serialization' -- and I've written a Boot parser and a
> | > Spad parser in C++ over the last 6 months in my
> | > spare time.
> |
> | Granted the "serialization" in this case is intentionally
> | very simple and it does involved counting leading
> | whitespace in each line.
>
> I'm afraid you would have to detail what you call
> `serialization', because I don't see one.
>
Here is a serialization of the example above:
( x ( x x ( x ( x ) ) x ) )
Regards,
Bill Page.
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