On 14 April 2010 20:09, Andreas Raab <andreas.raab at gmx.de> wrote:
> On 4/14/2010 9:26 AM, Igor Stasenko wrote:
>>
>> On 14 April 2010 19:13, Andreas Raab<andreas.raab at gmx.de>  wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes "we could", "we might perhaps" or "we ought to consider". So where is
>>> that code you speak of? I have been asking for it during the ealier
>>> discussions. The only thing I got back was hand-waiving.
>>
>> Completely correct statement.
>> Now think, who will write this code, knowing that some of hand-wavers
>> turn into a 'only over my dead body'
>> after you give them a working solution. So, why wasting time on
>> something which will never be accepted?
>
> It's a measure of your interest in moving this issue forward. If you don't
> care enough to write the conversion code, why would anyone else? Remember
> this is an "scratch your own itch" community; you can't expect others to do
> things for you if you're not willing to do them yourself.
>
Of course, i don't expect that someone would do anything i'd like to
be implemented.
I was speaking about, that when you doing something for community -
you expecting that it will be used.
Otherwise, you doing it for youself, and really don't care what others
thinking about it.
That's why i won't run implementing something before i know for sure
that its useful for people.
I have many other things, to be fun with, which i never ever think to
propose here and doing in my corner for myself.

>> I know for myself, how many of my ideas was rejected. And how many
>> things which i implemented never adopted in Squeak.
>
> I don't actually recall very many. Definitely fewer than the ideas I've
> posted and that never got implemented or adopted :-) If you want *all* of
> your own ideas adopted you'll have to write your own system. This is a
> community and we make community decisions, meaning that not all of your (or
> mine, or anyone else's) ideas will get adopted.
>
Yes, i accepting that. But sometimes...

>> So, i found that its better to keep discussing these issues over and
>> over again, up to the point where majority accepting the proposal,
>> only then its worth spending time implementing it.
>
> I think that in this case this may be a flawed approach. We know people feel
> differently about this issue. I think we can get agreement that the core
> should be "underscore neutral" i.e., not requiring a particular underscore
> interpretation (neither assignment, nor selector etc).
>
> This leaves the question of what the default interpretation for a shipping
> release should be. And from my point of view, that decision depends *purely*
> on the compatibility issue. We simply can't afford not to be able to file in
> our own code.
>
AFAIK, there are a tools existing for autoconverting underscore
assignments to := during filein.
Also i seen a small class which runs through existing source and
replacing all _ with := . Some of those tools are existing for years
by now.
So, what you are talking about? What compatibility problem? Is it a
very hard problem to run special scripts
while loading older code? I don't think so. So, sorry, i can't accept
that compatibility is a major issue here.

So, if its not a technical nor compatibility issue, then what is left?
What is left, is unwillingless of people to accept these changes for
the good of it.
And it is clear to me.

> There are various other simple things that could be done to soothe the
> underscore proponents, for example rendering := as <- via Shout instead of
> pretty print *which destroys method formatting). But these discussions are
> kinda pointless as long as we have the gaping compatibility hole.
>
No. It is wrong. Please, lets not take that route. Replacing a
character glyph representation is a bad idea.
If source code is text, then i expect it to be seen equally in any
text editor, regardless if editor knows
anything about smalltalk syntax or not. If you want to change the
visual representation of something in text, change the text,
don't hack the fonts or disguise one characters by another.
This is my personal opinion.

> Cheers,
>  - Andreas
>
>



-- 
Best regards,
Igor Stasenko AKA sig.