Sean wrote:
Joking aside, surely you intelligent people realize that the internals of a file format have nothing whatsoever to do with the user interface of the editing tool. Something like this would be completely transparent *if* you used the right tools.
But then you would be forced to use exactly those tools and/or that development platform. I have programmed in languages that extend beyond ASCII (most modern languages actually do, but that is another story.) One of these languages is APL or, more specifically, A+. Not a nice experience, and that is "just" an extension w.r.t. character table used. Once you leave the sheltered environment of a properly set up Emacs with proper fonts installed, it all looks like random junk.
This just shows how deeply ingrained the ascii plain text mindset is in the programming community. I don't expect anything like this to ever fly, for this reason. You guys won't let it. :(
We guys try and some of us have used non-alphanumeric symbols, but they do not add much, unless one leaves the linear realm of text completely and enters the world of diagrammatic notations.
Besides, the idea would be not to use , but rather some "indent paragraph" tag.
That would hardly make it more tractable outside the sheltered "Tag Editor," would it? foo bar = case bar of <indent />Zot x -> ... <indent />Pleb -> ... /David