From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.1.3 (2006-06-01) on yquem.inria.fr X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.0 required=5.0 tests=none autolearn=disabled version=3.1.3 X-Original-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Delivered-To: caml-list@yquem.inria.fr Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by yquem.inria.fr (Postfix) with ESMTP id 117C2BC69 for ; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:36 +0100 (CET) Received: from oden.vtab.com (dns.vtab.com [62.20.90.195]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.13.6/8.13.6) with ESMTP id l28A0Ytv007095 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO) for ; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:35 +0100 Received: from oden.vtab.com (oden.vtab.com [127.0.0.1]) by oden.vtab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 056F626EEA8; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:34 +0100 (CET) Received: from virtutech.se (alfredo.hq.vtech [10.0.0.52]) by oden.vtab.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id E51E926EEA6; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:33 +0100 (CET) Received: (from mattias@localhost) by virtutech.se (8.11.6/8.11.6) id l28A0VJ16234; Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:31 +0100 Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2007 11:00:31 +0100 Message-Id: <200703081000.l28A0VJ16234@virtutech.se> From: "=?iso-8859-1?q?Mattias_Engdeg=E5rd?=" To: martin.jambon@ens-lyon.org, caml-list@inria.fr, michel.levy@imag.fr In-reply-to: (message from Martin Jambon on Wed, 7 Mar 2007 14:59:48 -0800 (PST)) Subject: Re: [Caml-list] accented letters in identifiers Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 References: <45EF3EFB.5060509@imag.fr> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Virus-Scanned: ClamAV using ClamSMTP X-j-chkmail-Score: MSGID : 45EFDEC2.001 on concorde : j-chkmail score : X : 0/20 1 0.000 -> 1 X-Miltered: at concorde with ID 45EFDEC2.001 by Joe's j-chkmail (http://j-chkmail . ensmp . fr)! X-Spam: no; 0.00; mattias:01 mattias:01 ocaml:01 lexer:01 chops:01 vastly:01 caml-list:01 native:02 programming:03 identifiers:04 identifiers:04 enforce:05 programmer:06 teaching:07 mean:08 >I mean no. It is possible to use latin1 accents. > >[but I think it's best to avoid them in general and use pseudo-English >identifiers] For published code, certainly, but in general I think it is for the programmer to decide. After all, not using our native language makes us stupider, and using familiar names for identifiers can be important when teaching programming. What I have against the OCaml lexer is that it chops off the diacritics, so that smörgårdsbord == smorgardsbord. This may work in French, but is completely wrong in Swedish where o and ö are two completely different letters. (Accent-sensitivity might be a good idea for French as well, as it would enforce consistency.) And latin-1 is a bit quaint these days; it's not even enough for French. Let's support utf-8! Apart from being vastly more linguistically inclusive, it would allow us scientific programmers to use Greek letters.