Re: [9fans] Using proportional fonts in Acme for Programming

[Daniel Lyons <fusion@storytotell.org>]

On Aug 13, 2009, at 3:14 AM, Aaron W. Hsu wrote:

> So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources,  
> and I discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the  
> use of proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised  
> me, to say the least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was  
> the language they were using, and had managed to get a decent  
> indenting pattern for it that was just as readable, without messing  
> things up for proportional font users.
>
> I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a  
> technique actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some  
> questions to you.

Bjarne Stroustrup actually advocates this style in "The C++  
Programming Language."

This discussion reminds me of this elastic tab stops concept:

   http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/

I don't think it made it into any editors, but it would support the  
kind of fancy alignment I like to have in my code while also  
supporting real fonts, which I would prefer to use.

> Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases  
> like Lisp code, where you very often see something like the  
> following indentation scheme, and how would you resolve these  
> indentation problems with proportional width fonts if you did  
> continue to use them?
>
> 	(let ([foo bar]
> 	      [something else])
> 	  (some-func (called again)
>                     (with fun indentation)
>            (and yet)
>            (another)))


I bet you could set up Emacs to use a proportional font. It can do  
anything, right? :)

I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp  
variant.

—
Daniel Lyons