Re: Unicode block for programming related symbols and codepoints?

Hi Pierpaolo Bernardi,

given that you did include my adress as well as the unicode adress I'm
doing the same.

> On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 9:15 PM, Alfred Zett <alfred_z_at_web.de> wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> is there such a unicode block for programming related codepoints?
>>
>> Conventional search engines as well as wolfram alpha can't answer that, with
>> the former one leading to all the programming problems that occur...
>>
>> If such a block doesn't exist, I'd like to make a proposal - if possible -
>> to add one with at least the following codepoints/characters:
> Once upon a time I would have said that this is out of scope for
> Unicode. But now anything goes, so who knows.
That was exactly my thought, so I figured it couldn't harm to have these
comfy special characters in there :)
>> - Indentation codepoint, with no fixed defined graphical representation. For
>> indentation based programming languages.
>> Because:
>> -- specific clients may want to show it different (for example as arrows,
>> lines etc., using another color):
>> --- browsers could let the web page creator let decide the visual
>> representation (character and size) via CSS
>> --- the same with editors, independent from the actual font
>> --- in case of visual impairment, the user could even change the accoustical
>> representation if the editor allows it
>> -- unlike a space symbol, it wouldn't need more than one character per
>> indentation
>> -- unlike tabs or space, it wouldn't be whitespace
>> -- unlike normal arrow characters, one could customize the length in an
>> editor and wouldn't have to insert extra spaces for a better visual imagery
> a Tab is exactly what you described.
No. It's only half of what I described.
It's still a typographical character that implies whitespace and may
appear everywhere in the text.
Custom size behavior (but not too custom) is the only similarity to that
indentation character.
>
>> - A codepoint for string literal quotes, that would spare one the escaping.
> How would this work exactly?
Imagine you type " in your IDE, but because your IDE does know that this
new programming language requires this special character as literal
token, it replaces it with a special looking quotation mark.
Now you are free to type any type of quotation mark until you hit ESC or
something which places a closing special quotation mark and your caret
right to it.
Of course, IDEs could render this without special marks and a different
background colour instead; or whatever float the IDE creators boat.

>> - A statement separator symbol.
> What's wrong with ; , . : # % ^ & and other hundreds of punctuation symbols?
Nothing, they are just semantically not as nice and customizable.

Best regards
A.Z.

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Received on Sun Feb 08 2015 - 16:28:43 CST