August 2002 - Haskell-i18n

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk 26 Aug '02

26 Aug '02

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 10:56:43 -0400, Dylan Thurston <dpt(a)petunia.bostoncoop.net> pisze: > (I'd go further and require that the leading white-space always be > identical, not just get you to the same column. Tabs are not always > equal to 8 spaces...) Choosing a non-standard tab width is evil. They should be 8 spaces always and life would be a bit simpler. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak(a)knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/

4 3

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk 25 Aug '02

25 Aug '02

Sat, 24 Aug 2002 11:21:40 -0700, Ashley Yakeley <ashley(a)semantic.org> pisze: > I disagree, a tab is not an encoding for a run of spaces. It's an > entirely separate kind of whitespace. I use tabs to indent my code, Tabs are poorly suited for indenting because a tab has width 8 and this is at least twice too much for an indent unit for a functional language (i.e. lots of nested expressions). OCaml usually uses the indent of 2 (it has a bit more indents than Haskell because case alternatives etc. are delimited by |, usually put at the left). Tabs must have a consistent width, because otherwise mixing tabs with spaces (which will always happen from time to time when several people are editing the same code) has fatal consequences. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak(a)knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/

1 0

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Ashley Yakeley 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

At 2002-08-24 07:00, Alastair Reid wrote: >I don't think this discussion has any real bearing on >internationalization and nothing at all to do with what level of >indentation makes your code look nice. It is only about how you >_encode_ sequences of spaces in files. I disagree, a tab is not an encoding for a run of spaces. It's an entirely separate kind of whitespace. I use tabs to indent my code, and in fact this is to me more important than the width setting. It makes it very easy to raise and lower the indentation level and it guarantees that the blocks line up nicely. My indentation width is "one tab", not any number of spaces. I do sometimes use additional single spaces, usually when I have to break a line, but never for braced blocks. For about 95% of my code it makes little difference what setting you make your tabs, you'll just see the indentation rather heavily pronounced if you set it to 8. Occasionally I have some things that line up only for 4-tabs, sorry, but it's my code and you'll just have to deal with it. It should only be marginally annoying anyway. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

1 0

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Ashley Yakeley 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

At 2002-08-23 19:47, Glynn Clements wrote: > To determine the column number, assume a fixed-width font with this > tab convention: tab stops are 8 characters apart, and a tab > character causes the insertion of enough spaces to align the current > position with the next tab stop. > >If you want your code to compile properly, it will have to "look" >right to a compiler which has tab stops every eight columns. Oh I don't use layout, so this makes no difference to me. My blocks are explicitly and unambiguously marked with braces, and my declarations separated with semicolons. And my tabs are set to four, because the code looks nicer that way. And now with internationalisation, we're having all this trouble because the "column number" notion necessary for layout just doesn't work very well with such things as multiple scripts, special halfwidth forms, composed vs. decomposed characters, different-sized spaces etc. I think in this case some simple "90%" solution will be adequate, but my own preference is to avoid it altogether. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

2 1

RE: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Simon Marlow 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

> At 2002-08-23 16:28, Glynn Clements wrote: > > >Pedantry aside, I agree with your presumed meaning. The magic number > >is 8. If anyone wishes to believe otherwise, then fine; so long as > >they don't expect the rest of the world to share their delusion. > > Feh. There ought to be a "tabwidth" parameter for MIME text/plain, > however as far as I know there isn't. > > If you want to look at my source properly, you'll have to set > it to 4. My code, my choice. Much as I hate to add to this debate, tab stops are every 8 columns. If you want tab stops every 4 columns, use spaces - any reasonable editor can do this. Cheers, Simon

1 0

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 15:39:32 -0700, Ashley Yakeley <ashley(a)semantic.org> pisze: >>Choosing a non-standard tab width is evil. They should be 8 spaces >>always and life would be a bit simpler. > > I find four spaces much more useful for coding. You can get more > indentations in while still being noticeable. I didn't mean 8-space-wide indent but 8-space-wide tab. I use 4 spaces too (or even 3). And I don't us tabs by default. But when I have somebody else's code and make a change, it wouldn't be nice if the compiler suddenly complained about mixed tabs and spaces if it happened that the previous person used tabs. For example tabs are in ghc sources. -- __("< Marcin Kowalczyk \__/ qrczak(a)knm.org.pl ^^ http://qrnik.knm.org.pl/~qrczak/

1 0

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Ashley Yakeley 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

At 2002-08-23 16:28, Glynn Clements wrote: >Pedantry aside, I agree with your presumed meaning. The magic number >is 8. If anyone wishes to believe otherwise, then fine; so long as >they don't expect the rest of the world to share their delusion. Feh. There ought to be a "tabwidth" parameter for MIME text/plain, however as far as I know there isn't. If you want to look at my source properly, you'll have to set it to 4. My code, my choice. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

2 1

RE: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Ashley Yakeley 24 Aug '02

24 Aug '02

At 2002-08-21 03:42, Sven Moritz Hallberg wrote: >variable-width characters: >Unicode specifically doesn't say anything about the glyph representation >of the characters. Some characters are considered "half-width", see UTR #11. <http://www.unicode.org/unicode/reports/tr11/> I don't think it matters to us, though. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

5 4

Re: [Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source
by Ashley Yakeley 23 Aug '02

23 Aug '02

At 2002-08-23 10:51, Marcin 'Qrczak' Kowalczyk wrote: >Choosing a non-standard tab width is evil. They should be 8 spaces >always and life would be a bit simpler. I find four spaces much more useful for coding. You can get more indentations in while still being noticeable. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

1 0

Code
by Ashley Yakeley 23 Aug '02

23 Aug '02

I have some code for Unicode properties and the like I'd like to contribute, I just need a place to put it. Is it worth creating a SourceForge project for the internationalisation effort? I think other people have come up with stuff too, like UTF-8 decoders etc. -- Ashley Yakeley, Seattle WA

4 3