Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question

["Gian Uberto Lauri" <saint@eng.it>]

Dan Espen writes:

 > My mind is made up, but interesting info like how to type Greek
 > are one reason why I commented at all.  I think keyboards and
 > keys are an important issue and the current state of the art falls
 > far short.  Some important keys are completely missing.

There are factories producing keyboards with cherry switches and two or
three rows of "L(num)" keys on the right side. They are backlit and some
models have customizable light color.

 > I have no idea why HELP, UNDO, COPY, PASTE, REDO, MINIMIZE,
 > SCREEN LOCK, etc.

I think that these keys can be used for these functions. Many of them
are not GNU/Linux friendly.

 > >> I already have a little piece of oak tag paper that I've cut out
 > >> to surround the 6-key pad above the arrow keys.
 > >> The paper has the legend:
 > >> 
 > >>            UNDO
 > >> FRONT OPEN AGAIN
 > >>     -keys-
 > >>            COPY

There are companies creating keyboards with custom keycolors and mainly
custom key labels - i have Ctrl, Super and Meta on the low left corner
of mine.

 > > Maybe so.  But if you use the euro character a *lot*, for example,
 > > then you might just consider assigning it a key.  Rather than using
 > > `C-x 8 RET euro sign RET' each time to insert it.

You usually use composing or alt-5 for that.

There is one point pro the use of "more than the ASCII set" in a
source code.

Take the example of a code-grinder-written kind of program, and
consider code-grinders that are not native English speakers.

Let's assume that our code-grinder is a native Italian (or French,
Spanish or German) speaker and he is not used to English. Or the
project leader does want symbols (i.e. variable names) being in
the mother tongue of the coders.

In Italian "amount" translates with "quantità", but more than often
the symbol will be something like "quantita" due to the restriction to
pure ASCII. No matter what the brain of the coder will feel that
"quantita" is wrong, he will get used to it. But I think that is much
better to have a symbol written in a language the coder is able to use
for thinking.

Just my 2 cents.

And thanks to all who pointed out the subtle differences between
if, when, unless.

-- 
 /\           ___                                    Ubuntu: ancient
/___/\_|_|\_|__|___Gian Uberto Lauri_____               African word
  //--\| | \|  |   Integralista GNUslamico            meaning "I can
\/                 coltivatore diretto di software       not install
     già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso...                Debian"
	 Lisp illiterate.
	 
Warning: gnome-config-daemon considered more dangerous than GOTO