From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.help Subject: Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:34:39 +0100 Organization: Informatimago Message-ID: <87zj6yzkio.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <87sicvwckx.fsf@wmi.amu.edu.pl> <87wq27yvqg.fsf@debian.uxu> <8d531e99-7260-4263-ac99-09c6871e2708@googlegroups.com> <87vbhq53lf.fsf@debian.uxu> <87a8z23p23.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <87lhilx0cf.fsf@debian.uxu> <87twx9360u.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <0d1d19ab-06e9-462d-8867-9a49b1e232d3@googlegroups.com> <87lhil2io1.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> <87zj6zw0wy.fsf@debian.uxu> NNTP-Posting-Host: plane.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Trace: ger.gmane.org 1427460328 12652 80.91.229.3 (27 Mar 2015 12:45:28 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2015 12:45:28 +0000 (UTC) To: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org Original-X-From: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Mar 27 13:45:21 2015 Return-path: Envelope-to: geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([208.118.235.17]) by plane.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1YbTdY-0006MS-55 for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Mar 2015 13:45:20 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:50052 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1YbTdX-0006HD-Bc for geh-help-gnu-emacs@m.gmane.org; Fri, 27 Mar 2015 08:45:19 -0400 Original-Path: usenet.stanford.edu!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail Original-Newsgroups: gnu.emacs.help Original-Lines: 53 Original-X-Trace: individual.net okyKbEdqV0SYQ92u4rzjtQr1A69nBOaic05VnMHLjA1wwQoRig Cancel-Lock: sha1:M2IyMGFkZDM5Nzc4ZDg3MmMzNWMwODE1ZjgwZWZmY2RkYmMzNjI0Ng== sha1:v07aKrk/NL4P3j1FAGpUeF0bvc8= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux) Original-Xref: usenet.stanford.edu gnu.emacs.help:211108 X-BeenThere: help-gnu-emacs@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: Users list for the GNU Emacs text editor List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: help-gnu-emacs-bounces+geh-help-gnu-emacs=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.emacs.help:103390 Archived-At: Emanuel Berg writes: > Just as in the discussion (1+ data) vs. (+ 1 data) the > context - which here is: history, custom, and > experience - and not the properties of the things > compared, is the answer. With computers it is ASCII. > On university whiteboards anyone can draw whatever > chars anyone likes. I'm not saying, "Stop doing that, > use ASCII instead", am I? So the university people > should perhaps stick to their whiteboards as well! Absolutely! This is to mean, there is still a lot of work to be done in computer interfaces, notably for mathematical expression and manipulation, but also for other data structures representation and manipulation by non-programmers. Also, one has to consider that even unicode is a premature space optimization, being a fixed encoding of discretized forms, when the domain obviously is evolving. They're adding new versions of unicode with new characters (now emojis!) There are klingon unicode characters, why not futurama I & II unicode characters? There's a green turtle, why not a blue beetle? I'm not sure the unicode combinations are complete either and that one could write any "ideogram" combining existing characters. After all, unicode is a CODE. One could imagine in the future, computer systems that would perform the encoding on a "document" basis, where transmission would involve transmitting fonts and encoding along with the document structure. (Notice that Postscript has this notion (and can have any other, since it's Turing Complete), but I'm not sure it's retained in the more restricted PDF). The idea would be to have more meta-information provided along with the document. We could imagine that a letter to your grandma could be stored along with a "dictionary map" of the language you used, containing sufficient information so that an alien (or a computer system 1000 years later) intercepting it would be able to understand it easily. We would need more sophisticated software, to be able to deal intelligently with those documents. But this leads us very far from the alphabetic and ASCII idea. -- __Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/ “The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk