Re: typo in frame.el

[Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org>]

"Drew Adams" <drew.adams@oracle.com> writes:

> 2) Most emacs users are, and have been, (dare-I-say-it?) programmers. I
> doubt that "<=>" is very foreign to most of them. 

FWIW I've been through several symbolic logic classes (two semesters
on just symbolic logic, as well as the usual intros in about three or
four other classes) and I didn't pick up on that meaning of "<=>"
until I saw it explained.  Whereas "iff" has been perfectly clear to
me every time I've seen it.

Maybe it's the double lines.  Maybe it's the fact that it's not
connected.  Maybe it's that it looks like a little UFO in an ascii
game.  

I'd say that "<=>" is a huge step backwards in understandability.
Why should we pick that particular ASCII rendition of a symbol from
symbolic logic, especially since I'd wager that's not the only symbol
used for iff even in symbolic logic?  (I mean, there are two or three
different conventions for "and" and "or"!)

If we decide that "iff" is too confusing for people, the only benefit
to "<=>" is that it's practically guaranteed to be _more_ confusing
and nearly everyone will have to look it up!  Why don't we just
replace "iff" everywhere with "if", since people will get the idea?

After all, as fun as "iff" is to use, the original example wasn't
even completely clear there:

With a numeric argument, turn blinking cursor mode on iff ARG is positive.

Sure, blink-cursor-mode will change the blinking cursor to on if and
only iff ARG is positive, but it doesn't specify that it will turn the
blinking cursor off otherwise, since it's saying it will take a
certain action iff a condition is met.  It could just leave the cursor
in whatever state it's in if ARG is 0.

So, I think the whole argument about different representations of
"iff" is a waste of time.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - I am the rocks.
His ears made him look like a taxicab with both doors open