style question

[Jorgen Grahn]

Re: style question

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 15:31:53 -0700, Scott David Daniels <scott.daniels@ acm.org> wrote:
....[color=blue][color=green]
>> I like well-typeset code in print though. Bjarne Stroustrup uses an elegant
>> system for C++ code, ....[/color][/color]
[color=blue]
> See Knuth on Literate Programming and the "Web" systems (e.g. CWeb).
> His goal is to look good typeset with explanation, and extract-to-compile.[/color]

Yes, I'm aware of Knuth's work, and didn't mean to imply that Stroustrup did
something revolutionary -- although his book and Bertrand Meyer's Eiffel
book are the only ones I've read which try do something elegant with the
code typesetting.

I haven't read Knuth until now, so I assumed he typeset the actual code
parts fixed-width. I see in the CWeb manual that that's not the case.

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.dyn dns.org> R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Jorgen Grahn]

Re: style question

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:19:34 +0200, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@python ware.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Jorgen Grahn wrote:
>[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> assuming fixed-pitch fonts isn't very Pythonic, though; to get reliable indentation
>>> no matter what font you're using, you can write [...][/color]
>>
>> Since when? I've always coded, in all languages I've ever used[1], under the
>> assumption that the reader will view it with a fixed-pitch (or whatever the
>> proper term is) font. I assumed everyone else did, too.[/color]
>
> that's a popular myth.[/color]

I'm sorry, you will have to come up with some real references to convince me
(a PEP or preferrably something not Python-specific). Or not, because I will
keep assuming a fixed-width font in my programming anyway. Living the myth!

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.dyn dns.org> R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Jorgen Grahn]

Non-ASCII languages (was: Re: style question)

On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:19:34 +0200, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@python ware.com> wrote:[color=blue]
> Jorgen Grahn wrote:[/color]
....[color=blue][color=green]
>> (I like well-typeset code in print though. Bjarne Stroustrup uses an elegant
>> system for C++ code, where identifiers and strings are in Times italic,
>> operators in Courier, and so on.)[/color]
>
> the idea of printing everything in courier (or some other monospace
> font) is a rather new idea; if you read seventies stuff, the program
> code is often as carefully designed as the rest of the document.[/color]

Possibly true, and definitely for Knuth. But WYSIWYG was unknown at the
time; these people all programmed using fixed-width fonts, on teletypes or
character-mapped terminals. Hell, even full-screen editors were new and
controversial until the late 1970s!

Program editing and displaying/typesetting can be treated as separate from
each other. Personally, I think they /should/ be -- I prefer troff or LaTeX
to MS Word, after all.
[color=blue]
> (for an indication that we might be moving back to nicely rendered code,
> see Sun's new Fortress language, which provides extraordinarily detailed
> control over how identifiers are rendered, including extensive support
> for Unicode and math notation. it also mandates the use of proportional
> fonts for things like identifiers and comments...)[/color]

And Sun apparently think they should not be separate.
To me, it looks like they are planning for this language to fail.

If I wanted to try out this language, I would have to give up most of my
existing toolbox -- which works flawlessly with everything from TI assembly
to Python. And what would people discuss on comp.lang.fortr ess? Google
destroys Python code well enough ...

/Jorgen

--
// Jorgen Grahn <grahn@ Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu
\X/ snipabacken.dyn dns.org> R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

[Nick Maclaren]

Re: Non-ASCII languages (was: Re: style question)


In article <slrneachsh.2t1 .grahn+nntp@fra ilea.sa.invalid >,
Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp@sni pabacken.dyndns .org> writes:
|>
|> Possibly true, and definitely for Knuth. But WYSIWYG was unknown at the
|> time; these people all programmed using fixed-width fonts, on teletypes or
|> character-mapped terminals. Hell, even full-screen editors were new and
|> controversial until the late 1970s!

A slight niggle - WYSIWYG wasn't unknown, just both rare and not yet
called that! I have programmed using devices with half-line shifts,
real backspacing and so on - and some languages did mandate that a
character created by overprinting was to be treated as a composite
character.

Also, there were full-screen editors for things like IBM 3270s, though
they were absolutely ghastly for editing text (being designed for form
filling).

I agree with you that neither those days nor gimmicky approaches like
that of Fortress are worth pursuing. One of the main reasons that
'program proving' has never taken off outside its cabal is that it
uses bizarre notations unlike anything else on earth that can't be
edited in a normal fashion.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: Non-ASCII languages

Jorgen Grahn wrote:[color=blue]
> On Thu, 29 Jun 2006 23:19:34 +0200, Fredrik Lundh <fredrik@python ware.com> wrote:[color=green]
>> Jorgen Grahn wrote:[/color]
> ...[color=green][color=darkred]
>>> (I like well-typeset code in print though....[/color][/color]
> Possibly true, and definitely for Knuth. But WYSIWYG was unknown at the
> time; these people all programmed using fixed-width fonts, on teletypes or
> character-mapped terminals. Hell, even full-screen editors were new and
> controversial until the late 1970s![/color]
Sorry, I'm old enough to have a few problems with this. WYSIWIG was
indeed well known at the time, and disparaged as WYSIAYG around where I
worked (What You See Is All You Get). We had full screen editors, with
proportional fonts; SAIL (Stanford AI Lab) had the first laser printer
to play with (people wrote incredibly ugly documents with tons of fonts
in them because it was the first they could spec it). All of this was
in the mid seventies or earlier.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels@a cm.org

[Tim Roberts]

Re: Non-ASCII languages

Scott David Daniels <scott.daniels@ acm.orgwrote:

>
>SAIL (Stanford AI Lab) had the first laser printer
>to play with (people wrote incredibly ugly documents with tons of fonts
>in them because it was the first they could spec it).

"Ransom note syndrome." Virtually everyone falls prey to this the first
few times they discover desktop publishing.

>All of this was in the mid seventies or earlier.

Right. It surprises many people to learn that virtually everything we
think of as modern and interesting in computer science was first explored
in the 1960s and early 1970s. GUIs, color, 3D, structured progamming,
networking, interpreters, Unix; the list goes on and on. It was probably
the most exciting time in the history of computers.
--
- Tim Roberts, timr@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

[Scott David Daniels]

Re: Non-ASCII languages

Tim Roberts wrote:

It surprises many people to learn that virtually everything we
think of as modern and interesting in computer science was first explored
in the 1960s and early 1970s. GUIs, color, 3D, structured progamming,
networking, interpreters, Unix; the list goes on and on. It was probably
the most exciting time in the history of computers.

Here I think you're wrong, my vote is the 1940s:
First time for tons of stuff, fate of the world hangs in the
balance, no idea if some of this is going to work, ....
Essentially all the crypto push with top secret machines decoding
German traffic, and the desperate attempt to crack the Japanese
Purple system. I expect the efforts at Bletchley Park, Princeton,
numerous unnamed locations, and even Germany and Japan were pulse-
pounding. In the sixties and seventies we were just having immense
fun making things go, at least by comparison.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels@a cm.org