Hi Christophe, > > I'm opposed to syntax highlighting of symbols in PicoLisp. > > Wao, this is quite an introduction for a post on the list ! > I guess that it is not spontaneous and may be triggered by a discussion on > IRC?
Correct :) Though incidentally not IRC this time, but an e-mail conversation. Anyway, this issue popped up relatively often during the last years. My impression was that some people naturally expect syntax highlighting, or even demand it, and I felt I should also make my position clear. > > As I understand it, syntax highlighting marks symbols which are > > "keywords" in the language. However, PicoLisp doesn't have keywords. > > There are just "symbols". > > I perfectly agree with this, even though syntax highlighting may not > be restricted to symbols (no scoop here). Yes, as I said, comments. There isn't much more syntax to Lisp, except for the parentheses. Perhaps read-macros. > > experimented with strings (see *Tsm, transient symbol markup), but these > > are also symbols, with possible meaning depending on the context. And > > strings are clearly visible anyway. > > Clearly visible, at a certain level, indeed, but it can help to spot mistakes. True, unbalanced quotes. So strings indeed make sense. *Tsm gave a clear indication (underlining). > More precisely, concerning the language I’m basing on PicoLisp, which is > dedicated to beginners, I'd like to say: > - Coloring transient symbols is important to help students spot quote errors > (which may be trivial, but can occur with people not used to programming) Makes sense. ♪♫ Alex -- UNSUBSCRIBE: mailto:picolisp@software-lab.de?subject=Unsubscribe
