From: Jill.Ramonsky@Aculab.com
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 03:07:40 EDT
I'm afraid that's not very practical, because, you see, if I have a
hypothetical compiler for some hypothetical programming-language, and I
download some source-code from the internet and try to complile it, I expect
one of two things, either (1) it will compile cleanly, or (2) I will have to
UPGRADE my compiler (or version of Unicode), after which it will compile
cleanly.
I don't expect, however, to have to DOWNgrade my version of Unicode. And I
can't be expected to store EVERY numbered version of Unicode on my machine.
I prefer the idea that the list of allowed identifier characters increases
with each version of Unicode (or equivalently, that a list of excluded
characters decreases with each version of Unicode).
Sure - some mischevious types could write deliberately obfuscated code, but
I think that's irrelevant to us. (They can do that NOW. There are even
competitions for it). You only really need to consider ACCIDENTAL mistypes.
-->
Visual lookalikes are not NECESSARILY a problem, with a smart syntax engine.
I think it would be pretty useful to have variable names like "my-function"
(with a hyphen). A smart enough engine could transform the HYPHEN-MINUS into
either HYPHEN or MINUS as appropriate. A text editor would probably render
them in different colors anyway (one color for identifiers, another color
for operators) so there wouldn't necessarily be any confusion.
(Current C++ compilers do a similar thing today. A template class like
"A<B<C> >" needs that space, otherwise the ">>" would be interpreted as
"operator >>". Perhaps even more closely related, COBOL compilers allow
hyphens in identifier names, AND as a minus sign. Again, you have to use
spaces to distinguish the two uses).
Jill
-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Kirk [mailto:peterkirk@qaya.org]
Sent: Monday, August 25, 2003 3:14 PM
To: Marco Cimarosti
Cc: 'unicode@unicode.org'
Subject: Re: Proposed Draft UTR #31 - Syntax Characters
The way round this is to define syntax relative to a
specific version of Unicode.
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