Using non-ascii symbols

[Christoph Zwerschke]

On the page http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python3%2e0Suggestions
I noticed an interesting suggestion:

"These operators ≤ ≥ â‰* should be added to the language having the
following meaning:

<= >= !=

this should improve readibility (and make language more accessible to
beginners).

This should be an evolution similar to the digraphe and trigraph
(digramme et trigramme) from C and C++ languages."

How do people on this group feel about this suggestion?

The symbols above are not even latin-1, you need utf-8.

(There are not many usefuls symbols in latin-1. Maybe one could use ×
for cartesian products...)

And while they are better readable, they are not better typable (at
least with most current editors).

Is this idea absurd or will one day our children think that restricting
to 7-bit ascii was absurd?

Are there similar attempts in other languages? I can only think of APL,
but that was a long time ago.

Once you open your mind for using non-ascii symbols, I'm sure one can
find a bunch of useful applications. Variable names could be allowed to
be non-ascii, as in XML. Think class names in Arabian... Or you could
use Greek letters if you run out of one-letter variable names, just as
Mathematicians do. Would this be desirable or rather a horror scenario?
Opinions?

-- Christoph

[James Stroud]

Christoph Zwerschke wrote:

On the page http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python3%2e0Suggestions
I noticed an interesting suggestion:

"These operators ≤ ≥ â‰* should be added to the language having the
following meaning:

<= >= !=

this should improve readibility (and make language more accessible to
beginners).

This should be an evolution similar to the digraphe and trigraph
(digramme et trigramme) from C and C++ languages."

How do people on this group feel about this suggestion?

The symbols above are not even latin-1, you need utf-8.

(There are not many usefuls symbols in latin-1. Maybe one could use ×
for cartesian products...)

And while they are better readable, they are not better typable (at
least with most current editors).

Is this idea absurd or will one day our children think that restricting
to 7-bit ascii was absurd?

Are there similar attempts in other languages? I can only think of APL,
but that was a long time ago.

Once you open your mind for using non-ascii symbols, I'm sure one can
find a bunch of useful applications. Variable names could be allowed to
be non-ascii, as in XML. Think class names in Arabian... Or you could
use Greek letters if you run out of one-letter variable names, just as
Mathematicians do. Would this be desirable or rather a horror scenario?
Opinions?

-- Christoph

I can't find "≤, ≥, or â‰*" on my keyboard.

James

[Robert Kern]

James Stroud wrote:

I can't find "≤, ≥, or â‰*" on my keyboard.

Get a better keyboard? or OS?

On OS X,

≤ is Alt-,
≥ is Alt-.
â‰* is Alt-=

Fewer keystrokes than <= or >= or !=.

--
Robert Kern
ro*********@gma il.com

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter

[Giovanni Bajo]

Robert Kern wrote:

I can't find "?, ?, or ?" on my keyboard.

Get a better keyboard? or OS?

On OS X,

? is Alt-,
? is Alt-.
? is Alt-=

Fewer keystrokes than <= or >= or !=.

Sure, but I can't find OS X listed as a prerequisite for using Python. So,
while I don't give a damn if those symbols are going to be supported by Python,
I don't think the plain ASCII version should be deprecated. There are too many
situations where it's still useful (coding across old terminals and whatnot).
--
Giovanni Bajo

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Tue, 24 Jan 2006 04:09:00 +0100, Christoph Zwerschke wrote:

On the page http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python3%2e0Suggestions
I noticed an interesting suggestion:

"These operators ≤ ≥ â‰* should be added to the language having the
following meaning:

<= >= !=

this should improve readibility (and make language more accessible to
beginners).

This should be an evolution similar to the digraphe and trigraph
(digramme et trigramme) from C and C++ languages."

How do people on this group feel about this suggestion?

The symbols above are not even latin-1, you need utf-8.

(There are not many usefuls symbols in latin-1. Maybe one could use ×
for cartesian products...)
Or for multiplication :-)

And while they are better readable, they are not better typable (at
least with most current editors).

Is this idea absurd or will one day our children think that restricting
to 7-bit ascii was absurd?

Are there similar attempts in other languages? I can only think of APL,
but that was a long time ago.
My earliest programming was on (classic) Macintosh, which supported a
number of special characters including ≤ ≥ â‰* with the obvious
meanings. They were easy to enter too: the Mac keyboard had (has?) an
option key, and holding the option key down while typing a character would
enter a special character. E.g. option-s gave Greek sigma, option-p gave
pi, option-less-than gave ≤, and so forth. Much easier than trying to
memorize character codes.

I greatly miss the Mac's ease of entering special characters, and I miss
the ability to use proper mathematical symbols for (e.g.) pi, not equal,
and so forth.
Once you open your mind for using non-ascii symbols, I'm sure one can
find a bunch of useful applications. Variable names could be allowed to
be non-ascii, as in XML. Think class names in Arabian... Or you could
use Greek letters if you run out of one-letter variable names, just as
Mathematicians do. Would this be desirable or rather a horror scenario?
Opinions?

I think the use of digraphs like != for not equal is a poor substitute for
a real not-equal symbol. I think the reliance of 7-bit ASCII is horrible
and primitive, but without easier, more intuitive ways of entering
non-ASCII characters, and better support for displaying non-ASCII
characters in the console, I can't see this suggestion going anywhere.

--
Steven.

[Claudio Grondi]

Christoph Zwerschke wrote:

On the page http://wiki.python.org/moin/Python3%2e0Suggestions
I noticed an interesting suggestion:

"These operators ≤ ≥ â‰* should be added to the language having the
following meaning:

<= >= !=

this should improve readibility (and make language more accessible to
beginners).

This should be an evolution similar to the digraphe and trigraph
(digramme et trigramme) from C and C++ languages."

How do people on this group feel about this suggestion?

The symbols above are not even latin-1, you need utf-8.

(There are not many usefuls symbols in latin-1. Maybe one could use ×
for cartesian products...)

And while they are better readable, they are not better typable (at
least with most current editors).

Is this idea absurd or will one day our children think that restricting
to 7-bit ascii was absurd?

Are there similar attempts in other languages? I can only think of APL,
but that was a long time ago.

Once you open your mind for using non-ascii symbols, I'm sure one can
find a bunch of useful applications. Variable names could be allowed to
be non-ascii, as in XML. Think class names in Arabian... Or you could
use Greek letters if you run out of one-letter variable names, just as
Mathematicians do. Would this be desirable or rather a horror scenario?
Opinions?

-- Christoph

One of issues in Python is cross-platform portability. Limiting the
range of symbols to lower ASCII and with specification of a code table
to ASCII is a good deal here. I think, that Unicode is not yet
everywhere and as long it is that way it makes not much sense to go for
it in Python.

Claudio

[Ido Yehieli]

>> Is this idea absurd or will one day our children think

that restricting to 7-bit ascii was absurd?

Both... this idea will only become none-absurd when unicode will become
as prevalent as ascii, i.e. unicode keyboards, universal support under
almost every application, and so on. Even if you can easly type it on
your macintosh, good luck using it while using said macintosh to ssh or
telnet to a remote server and trying to type unicode...

[Juho Schultz]

Christoph Zwerschke wrote:

"These operators ≤ ≥ â‰* should be added to the language having the
following meaning:

<= >= !=

this should improve readibility (and make language more accessible to
beginners).

I assume most python beginners know some other programming language, and
are familiar with the >= and friends. Those learning python as their
first programming language will benefit from learning the >= when they
learn a new language.

Unicode is not yet supported everywhere, so some editors/terminals might
display the suggested one-char operators as something else, effectively
"guess what operator I was thinking".

Fortran 90 allowed >, >= instead of .GT., .GE. of Fortran 77. But F90
uses ! as comment symbol and therefore need /= instead of != for
inequality. I guess just because they wanted. However, it is one more
needless detail to remember. Same with the suggested operators.

[Rocco Moretti]

Giovanni Bajo wrote:

Robert Kern wrote:

I can't find "?, ?, or ?" on my keyboard.

Posting code to newsgroups might get harder too. :-)

[Robert Kern]

Rocco Moretti wrote:

[James Stroud wrote:]

I can't find "?, ?, or ?" on my keyboard.

Posting code to newsgroups might get harder too. :-)

His post made it through fine. Your newsreader messed it up.

--
Robert Kern
ro*********@gma il.com

"In the fields of hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die."
-- Richard Harter