I'll add that ;: is useful basis for alternate parsing of J, and it might mess up previous assumptions. 4!:0 might be an issue. PI is easier to input for most than π.
One unifying technique that I can incorporate into a "self parser" I'm working on is to convert π to U960 "for use in names" ----- Original Message ----- From: Eric Iverson <eric.b.iver...@gmail.com> To: Source forum <sou...@jsoftware.com> Sent: Tuesday, July 5, 2016 5:50 PM Subject: Re: [Jsource] Unicode identifiers We made the decision well more than a decade ago that unicode identifiers would be a mistake. That decision was unanimous within Jsoftware at that time. It would have been just as easy to add the support then as it is now. Has anything changed that would make us reconsider? I can only comment for myself. There are 3 main reasons I am against it: 1. It is a fringe area and does not warrant the effort it would take - very little bang for buck. 2. It is deceptively easy at first, but is a slippery slope. As is pretty much everything with unicode. European accented letters seem like a no-brainer. Then CJK. Then lots of others. Then lots of special guys. APL symbols. ETC. Glyphs that look exactly the same on paper, but that are different code points. This takes thought and (see 1) it just isn't warranted. 3. Ken left us with many fundamental ideas. One was that notation is a tool of thought. The correllary is that notation is a way of communication. If we limit J identifiers as they currently stand then algorithms can be easily and effectively be communicated around the entire world. Let in unicode identifiers and this would suffer enormously. Unicode is for data and the support there is pretty good. It serves no useful purpose in identifiers and would be a serious impediment to communication. For historical reasons the English alphabet has a privileged position in J identifiers. Perhaps this is wrong in some senses, but it is enormously practical when it comes to international communications. I'd be very happy to not talk about this again for another 10 years. On Mon, Jul 4, 2016 at 3:53 PM, Jose Mario Quintana < jose.mario.quint...@gmail.com> wrote: > On the one hand, Marshal asserts that Unbox allows the use of UTF-8 based > identifiers in a way that "is completely backwards-compatible with existing > J." which I find very appealing. > > On the other hand, you (Jsoftware) decided strongly against it because > "the disadvantages > strongly outweighed the advantages." > > Would you mind to elaborate on what the disadvantages are? > > > On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 4:38 PM, Eric Iverson <eric.b.iver...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > > We (Jsoftware) talked about unicode identifiers quite a bit years ago > when > > we added uft8 and utf16 support to J. We finally decided we were strongly > > against it. The disadvantages strongly outweighed the advantages. I don't > > think anything has changed in the interim. > > > > I doubt unicode names will be in official Jsoftware releases for a long > > time, if ever. > > > > On Sun, Jun 12, 2016 at 4:30 PM, Marshall Lochbaum <mwlochb...@gmail.com > > > > wrote: > > > > > Unbox has code to allow unicode identifiers in J, with the following > > > rules: > > > > > > - All code must be UTF-8. Invalid UTF-8 causes a spelling error. > > > - Any non-ASCII character is treated as alphabetic. Identifiers can use > > > these characters freely. > > > > > > This is completely backwards-compatible with existing J, and allows us > > > to use things like greek characters and code in other languages: > > > > > > π > > > |value error: π > > > π =: 1p1 > > > π > > > 3.14159 > > > π_1 > > > |value error: π_1 > > > > > > What do people think about this? Should it be added to jsource? Should > > > the rules be changed for some characters? > > > > > > Marshall > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
