• Eric Gerlach (24/24) Sep 20 2001 Hello all,
• Walter (6/30) Sep 21 2001 While things like keywords in katakana is possible and in fact easy to
• Axel Kittenberger (35/43) Sep 21 2001 I used to program Microsoft Access databases in my dark past. Okay I was...

Eric Gerlach <egerlach canada.com> writes:

Hello all,

I truly hate being off-line for several weeks.  There are tons of things 
I want to reply to (only a fraction of which I'll get to I'm sure), but 
here's something I've been thinking about recently which has had me 
quite enthusiastic about D.

Unicode.

Unicode is a very powerful tool.  Right now it's just sitting on the 
sidelines of D.  You can use it, but the language doesn't really know 
what to do with it.  I've come up with a couple of ideas that could 
significantly increase the power of D.  What do people think of the 
following:

- Expanding the allowable alphabet for variable names to include parts 
of other character sets
- Having translated keywords in other languages (ex: having katakana 
translations for 'if', 'else', etc.)
- (I've mentionned this already) Using the Unicode mathematical 
operators for operator overloading
- Having a roman numerals parser (there are roman numeral characters in 
Unicode!!)

I'm sure there are other powerful uses for Unicode in D that I haven't 
thought of.  It's really a powerful addition to the language.  How many 
of these things have been considered?

Cheers,

Eric

"Walter" <walter digitalmars.com> writes:

Eric Gerlach wrote in message <3BAA4D5E.70402 canada.com>...
Hello all,

I truly hate being off-line for several weeks.  There are tons of things
I want to reply to (only a fraction of which I'll get to I'm sure), but
here's something I've been thinking about recently which has had me
quite enthusiastic about D.

Unicode.

Unicode is a very powerful tool.  Right now it's just sitting on the
sidelines of D.  You can use it, but the language doesn't really know
what to do with it.  I've come up with a couple of ideas that could
significantly increase the power of D.  What do people think of the
following:

- Expanding the allowable alphabet for variable names to include parts
of other character sets
- Having translated keywords in other languages (ex: having katakana
translations for 'if', 'else', etc.)
- (I've mentionned this already) Using the Unicode mathematical
operators for operator overloading
- Having a roman numerals parser (there are roman numeral characters in
Unicode!!)

I'm sure there are other powerful uses for Unicode in D that I haven't
thought of.  It's really a powerful addition to the language.  How many
of these things have been considered?

Cheers,

Eric


While things like keywords in katakana is possible and in fact easy to
implement, I'm not sure if it makes much sense. In my experience, Japanese
computer engineers are accustomed to english technical words, because of
this I've been able to use Japanese technical manuals written in Japanese
despite not knowing a word of Japanese.

Axel Kittenberger <axel dtone.org> writes:

 - Expanding the allowable alphabet for variable names to include parts
 of other character sets

question: 16 bit or 32 bit Unicode?

 - Having translated keywords in other languages (ex: having katakana
 translations for 'if', 'else', etc.)

I used to program Microsoft Access databases in my dark past. Okay I was 
young and I needed the money :o) But well the ms officage just has this 
"nice" feature, that localisation also includes the commandos, and living 
in germany we've usually mixed installations of german and english 
software. They german ones understood commandos like "schalte" instead of 
"switch", "wenn" instead of "if". etc. I think one can easily imagine the 
horrors that can be created when some scripts work well on computer A but 
fails on computer B. 

Imagine you've one day to debug localized "C" like this
-----
#einbeziehe <stdio.h>

nichts haupt(ganz argc, ganz* argv[])
{
  ganz i = 1;
  schreibef("hallo welt\n");
  mache {
        i *= 2;
        schreibef("%d", i);
        schalte (i) {
                fall 8  : schreibef("- acht\n"); abbreche;
                ansonst : schreibef("\n"); abbreche;
        }
  } während( i < 100);
  zurückbege;
}
 
----

I don't see what the advantage for a german reader would be, yet what an 
english would think.

 - (I've mentionned this already) Using the Unicode mathematical
 operators for operator overloading

If you allow unicode for variable names also, you've again the old 
conflict, whats an operater, whats a variable.

 - Having a roman numerals parser (there are roman numeral characters in
 Unicode!!)

Any possilbe -real- uses for this? instead of helping obfusication contests 
:/

- Axel