Re: Eclipse

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From: Jarkko Hietaniemi
Subject: Re: Eclipse
Date: 13:53 on 29 Oct 2006
>
>>     ×                 ??? Over there!
> 
> No, that was a backslash, a three, a two, and a seven.  Please try
> again.  If you disagree, then consider my usual invitation to the
> Unicodistas to be extended - I'll take you seriously once you've

Viva la Revolución!

> configured all my machines and all my applications to display your
> foolishness properly.

My consultations fees are very reasonable, I require caviar and
champagne only three times a day, not four.

While the Hatefulness derivative of the universe is at best zero, but
more probably positive, one can choose.  These days I choose only
systems that do handle Unicode, out of the box.  Like this OS and
email client.

> Additionally, from looking at a unicode table, that character is
> visually indistinguishable from the letter x.

Again, choice: in my screen × and x are different.

While using styli and clay pads might still be neat, let's get on
with the program and prefer machines/applications that do support
Unicode.  (And Unicode 5.0 includes cuneiform, if you are feeling
nostalgic.)

> If one can not tell the
> difference between this ...
> 
>   A=x*y;
> 
> and this ...
> 
>   A=xxy; # is that x times y, or x squared times y, or the variable xxy?
> 
> then you are, to put it bluntly, fucked.
> 
>>                     It would be nice if someday using a computer
>> didn't mean suffering bad typography.
> 
> It doesn't right now.  TeX and LaTeX have existed for ages.
> 
> There is, however, a fairly fundamental difference between documents
> intended for a wide non-technical audience and code.  With the former it
> is worth putting in a little effort to make it look pretty, because the
> hoi-polloi think that's important.  For code, what matters is clarity,
> ease of production and ease of maintenance.  KISS applies just as much
> to your file format as to your algorithms. 
> 
>> In fact, not even monospace fonts are necessarily sacred. They
>> are currently necessary if you want to align blocks of text
>> across multiple lines, but that could easily be achieved with
>> proportional fonts by employing a scheme similar to elastic
>> tabstops (<http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/>;). I'm not
>> sure this can be implemented well without knowledge of the
>> document format, though, so it might not be feasible in a generic
>> editor.
> 
> And given that yer average programmer works with several languages,
> having one generic editor is a Very Good Thing.
> 

There's stuff above here

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