Hi all, after some discussion in IRC, we re-introduced a feature into PicoLisp that had been there already once, in 2006/2007. It is called "transient symbol markup", and changes how transient symbols are printed and edited in a terminal window.
Now, per default, transient symbols are no longer surrounded by double quotes, but are instead shown with _underlines_. The idea is to visually emphasize the fact that these symbols are not strings. In addition, pretty-printed functions and other structured data become more readable. There is a new global variable '*Tsm', which holds two strings (typically escape sequences) in a dotted pair. The CAR is sent to the terminal (instead of the opening double quote) before the symbol name is written, and the CDR after that (instead of the closing double quote). With (off *Tsm) this behavior can be switched off, and the system will accept and output transient symbols with plain double quotes as before. When typing a transient symbol in the line editor, the double quote is visible at the moment it is entered, but will be hidden after that. While moving within a line (for example with the 'h' and 'l' commands) the double quotes pop up whenever the cursor is in their neighborhood, to make it easier to change them or to insert characters before or after them, but disappear when the cursor moves away. Armadillo (tc.rucho) is implementing support for transient symbol markup also in his picolisp mode for 'emacs'. I would love to have it in 'vim' too, but have no idea if or how this might be possible. Cheers, - Alex -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:[email protected]?subject=unsubscribe
