RE: Character properties

From: Jonathan Rosenne (rosenne@qsm.co.il)
Date: Fri Sep 22 2000 - 04:41:17 EDT


In this list at least, all languages and all scripts are equal.

I find the term "foreign" and the attitude it conveys inappropriate.

Let me note, for the record, that from my personal objective point of view
everything that is not Hebrew is foreign.

Jony

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk [mailto:qrczak@knm.org.pl]
> Sent: Friday, September 22, 2000 9:13 AM
> To: Unicode List
> Subject: Re: Character properties
>
>
> Thu, 21 Sep 2000 23:55:24 +0330 (IRT), Roozbeh Pournader
> <roozbeh@sina.sharif.ac.ir> pisze:
>
> > > isDigit intentionally recognizes ASCII digits only. IMHO it's more
> > > often needed and this is what the Haskell 98 Report says. (But I
> > > don't follow the report in some other cases.)
> >
> > Would you please give me some URL?
>
> http://www.haskell.org/definition/
> The Haskell 98 Library Report, module Char.
>
> > I disagree with the isDigit case, simply because my main language,
> > Persian, uses alternate digits when written.
>
> Do they form numbers in the same way as ASCII digits?
>
> Does Unicode character database provide a way to tell which digits
> form numbers in this way (decimal, "big Endian")?
>
> Do you think that they (and digits from other languages) should
> be recognized as numbers in sources for programming languages that
> generally accept foreign letters in identifiers? (I don't know what
> Haskell gurus would say for that.)
>
> What about isOctDigit and isHexDigit?
>
> Haskell provides digitToInt and intToDigit which currently deal with
> ASCII digits and hexadecimal "digits" A..F a..f. If isDigit accepted
> foreign digits, it would make sense to extend digitToInt to convert
> them too. But obviously not intToDigit.
>
> BTW. For using foreign alphabets in identifiers, Haskell divides
> identifiers into two classes basing on the case of the first letter,
> similarly to Prolog, SML, OCaml, Clean. It is a problem for alphabets
> without cases. I'm not sure what should be done with it. Haskell98
> says that letters which are not lowercase should be considered
> uppercase. I don't agree with it and my library extension/change
> proposal allows characters which are isAlpha but neither isLower nor
> isUpper. When carried to Haskell sources, it's not obvious how to
> classify identifiers starting with these letters.
>
> --
> __("< Marcin Kowalczyk * qrczak@knm.org.pl http://qrczak.ids.net.pl/
> \__/
> ^^ SYGNATURA ZASTÊPCZA
> QRCZAK
>



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