Re: Proposed Draft UTR #31 - Syntax Characters

From: Peter Kirk (peterkirk@qaya.org)
Date: Mon Aug 25 2003 - 06:49:44 EDT

  • Next message: Marco Cimarosti: "RE: Proposed Draft UTR #31 - Syntax Characters"

    On 25/08/2003 01:13, Marco Cimarosti wrote:

    >Peter Kirk wrote:
    >
    >
    >>Well, the situation with Hebrew sof pasuq is almost identical to that
    >>for Greek and Arabic question marks, except that it is functionally a
    >>full stop not a question mark, so I can't see any reason other than
    >>prejudice for omitting it from the list.
    >>
    >>
    >
    >Well, I had a much better reason than prejudice: ignorance. :-)
    >
    OK, understood! Actually I had more problems with Mark's refusal to
    extend your list.

    >
    >Well, the requirement for an invariable set seems to be part of the "rules
    >of the game" with this UTR, so I'll stick to it.
    >
    Well, I was taking a rather different approach: noting that UTR31 is so
    far only a "proposed draft", I was suggesting a change to the rules of
    the game.

    >
    >I guess that this requirement is due to backward compatibility issues. If
    >version X of a certain programming language accepts identifier "foo:bar"
    >(where ":" is a certain mark), it is not acceptable that version X+1 of the
    >same language treats the same sequence as a syntax error: that would make
    >existing source code in that language potentially unusable.
    >
    But the other way round is less of a problem. So I am suggesting that
    for now we define all punctuation characters except for those with
    specifically defined operator functions, also all undefined characters,
    as giving a syntax error. This makes it possible to define additional
    punctuation characters, even those in so far undefined scripts like
    Tifinagh, as valid operators in future versions.

    -- 
    Peter Kirk
    peter@qaya.org (personal)
    peterkirk@qaya.org (work)
    http://www.qaya.org/
    


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