PMA <[email protected]> wrote: > Ok, saying "any" was my bad.
Not at all, you were perfectly clear in context. I just found myself unable to echo you without the same context, so I had to provide additional information. > But I want to convey that > for me this relatedness -- the primitive set as a family -- > is more important than my getting to type just 1 token > instead of 2. The fact is that we'll probably always have to type the same 2 tokens -- at least that was my assumption. The goal here is to make the 2 combine to _read_ as a single token. > I hope that a winning 1-token-command > design will do utmost to emulate -- change, perhaps, > but not dilute or trade off -- such organization. I don't think that dilution is completely terrible. In some cases the grouping simply doesn't make sense. For example, >: was clearly chosen for its graphical similarity to its proper glyph, rather than because it was really a double-dot modification of > parallel to how >. is a single-dot modification. Therefore I would support >: displaying as its traditional symbol -- although I would also happily support displaying that traditional symbol being displayed in a way that LOOKS more like the bar is a colon, so that even if you forget how to type it you can somewhat see what it might be. And tradeoffs... Well, I'm all about tradeoffs. However, I'd love to see what a good unicode programmer might be able to craft to demonstrate an overstrike-like J symbol set, one simply composed of the primary character single-dotted, umlauted, or overstruck with a superscripted dot, double-dot, colon... The result might be compelling and more portable, and as a bonus would certainly be more helpful to people trying to remember how to type any given glyph. I DO have to agree with you at LEAST that we should probably start out with something that resembles J's actual primitives, and modify that only if we find something unarguably better. OTOH, I'm willing to experiment. -Wm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
