| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395429 is a reply to message #395421] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 13:31   |
Charlie Gibbs
Messages: 5313
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-06-05, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
> On 6/5/2020 11:27 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>
>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>>
>>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t
>>>> order (except for health and safety, of course)
>>>
>>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
Welcome to Canadian politics. (But then, nearly all politics is
asinine and childishly pathetic.)
>> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the
>> Bourassa government.
<snip>
>> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the
>> ones in the aisles for finding things - in which the French language
>> predominated. Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts
>> overturned that in 1988.
>>
>> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans,
>> as it would be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been
>> a State in which the majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were
>> concerned that the Spanish language was eroding because of the economic
>> dominance of English, then the United States might see similar issues,
>> but no analogous situation exists.
When we went to Ireland a few years ago, I found it a pleasant relief
to see how laid-back they are about bilingualism compared to Canada.
> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
> English-only words like "if" and "else" ?
Hmmm, good point.
And don't get me started about bilingual air traffic control.
--
/~\ Charlie Gibbs | Microsoft is a dictatorship.
\ / <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> | Apple is a cult.
X I'm really at ac.dekanfrus | Linux is anarchy.
/ \ if you read it the right way. | Pick your poison.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395430 is a reply to message #395306] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 14:22 |
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Originally posted by: Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
On 04/06/2020 2:09 am, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
> Now if I were to sit down and design The Perfect Keyboard For Me And
> Only Me (i.e. a_custom_ keyboard, rather than a "better" keyboard), I
> might get as picky as you. I'd certainly have the numeric keypad
> duplicated on the left (farther left than the function keys) since I do
> number-pad entry more quickly with my left hand, and for a couple
> decades my wish list included having that be a hexadecimal one instead
> of decimal, because -- guess what! -- I was typing hex into things a lot
> then. Oh yeah, the Perfect Keyboard For Me And Only Me would have to
> change depending on what I was doing a lot of during different periods.
> All in all, a few of the layouts of mass-produced keyboards have sucked
> pretty badly, but most have been adequate, decent, or better, for a wide
> range of tasks. (Note that choice of switches / mechanical design has
> sucked on a lot more keyboards than layout has.)
Nowadays you can buy a separate number pad, and keep to the left of your
keyboard. Now whether that's something you'd find useful is a different
story. A hexadecimal number pad would equally be useful, and I wonder
idly if any custom keyboard people have done that before?
There is a thriving community of people who make their own custom
keyboards. So if you really, really want to make a keyboard for you
and only you, you'll find a lot of resources and communities online;
some I've been told, in Japanese.
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | twitter: @myrkraverk
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395431 is a reply to message #395429] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 14:24 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> wrote:
> On 2020-06-05, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
>
>> On 6/5/2020 11:27 AM, Quadibloc wrote:
>>
>>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can’t
>>>> > order (except for health and safety, of course)
>>>>
>>>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>
> Welcome to Canadian politics. (But then, nearly all politics is
> asinine and childishly pathetic.)
>
>>> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the
>>> Bourassa government.
>
> <snip>
>
>>> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the
>>> ones in the aisles for finding things - in which the French language
>>> predominated. Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts
>>> overturned that in 1988.
>>>
>>> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans,
>>> as it would be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been
>>> a State in which the majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were
>>> concerned that the Spanish language was eroding because of the economic
>>> dominance of English, then the United States might see similar issues,
>>> but no analogous situation exists.
>
> When we went to Ireland a few years ago, I found it a pleasant relief
> to see how laid-back they are about bilingualism compared to Canada.
>
>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
>> English-only words like "if" and "else" ?
>
> Hmmm, good point.
>
> And don't get me started about bilingual air traffic control.
>
I thought English was the official language of ATC except for certain
domestic flights in
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395432 is a reply to message #395360] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 14:27 |
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Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:
> Certainly FORTRAN seems to be a different language, from my perspective of
> not knowing very much about it. OTOH perhaps the distinction should be
> whether the current compiler can still compile old programs unchanged.
There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
I'm there, doing that.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395437 is a reply to message #395430] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 14:33 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> wrote:
> On 04/06/2020 2:09 am, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>> Now if I were to sit down and design The Perfect Keyboard For Me And
>> Only Me (i.e. a_custom_ keyboard, rather than a "better" keyboard), I
>> might get as picky as you. I'd certainly have the numeric keypad
>> duplicated on the left (farther left than the function keys) since I do
>> number-pad entry more quickly with my left hand, and for a couple
>> decades my wish list included having that be a hexadecimal one instead
>> of decimal, because -- guess what! -- I was typing hex into things a lot
>> then. Oh yeah, the Perfect Keyboard For Me And Only Me would have to
>> change depending on what I was doing a lot of during different periods.
>> All in all, a few of the layouts of mass-produced keyboards have sucked
>> pretty badly, but most have been adequate, decent, or better, for a wide
>> range of tasks. (Note that choice of switches / mechanical design has
>> sucked on a lot more keyboards than layout has.)
>
> Nowadays you can buy a separate number pad, and keep to the left of your
> keyboard. Now whether that's something you'd find useful is a different
> story. A hexadecimal number pad would equally be useful, and I wonder
> idly if any custom keyboard people have done that before?
>
> There is a thriving community of people who make their own custom
> keyboards. So if you really, really want to make a keyboard for you
> and only you, you'll find a lot of resources and communities online;
> some I've been told, in Japanese.
>
My idea of a perfect keyboard is one with fewer keys rather than more. For
example, I’d have the numeric pad triple up as not only numeric and control
functions, as at present, but also as a pad of PF keys. This would
eliminate the top row of PF keys and shrink the keyboard vertically. Then
I’d get rid of that d@mn “windows” key. (I have a special-order 101-key
keyboard without one)
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395440 is a reply to message #395424] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 14:57 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 11:03:23 AM UTC-6, Peter Flass wrote:
> We’re more concerned with the opposite, although businesses here usually do
> business in both languages. You need to do what your customers want.
And this is why the government is forced to intervene!
That the French speakers of Quebec see themselves as an aggrieved minority is
not something I'm going to say is wrong.
Attempting to address the issue by discriminating against English speakers,
while they're still living in a country where English speakers are the majority,
seems to me to be suicidal. But there are good historical reasons why they're
getting away with it for now.
It would be very easy for me as a Canadian to be smug and sanctimonious about
the current racial unrest in the United States. Despite the fact that we are far
from perfect ourselves.
But that is not my inclination. Canada does have problems with racism, but on
the other hand in some respects it has gone to far in the other direction: an
Ontario neighborhood by the name of Caledonia was terrorized by First Nations
occupiers for an extended period - and this was tolerated because the government
felt guilty about an earlier incident where the response to a protest by Natives
was excessive, resulting in deaths.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395441 is a reply to message #395432] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 15:00 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12:27:42 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
> many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
> Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
> I'm there, doing that.
I'm sorry, but usually what *counts* is getting existing programs to work with
the least amount of trouble. So anything less than strict upwards compatibility,
even with the quirks and undocumented features of earlier compilers, is a major
problem.
Often, the money just isn't there to re-write an old program to bring it up to
current standards.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395447 is a reply to message #395432] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 17:27 |
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Originally posted by: Bob Eager
On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 18:27:41 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But many
> people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
Indeed. There was once (actually, still is) a large multinational company
who invented a language for building applications on their system. Thew
compiler was written in COBOL. The run time system was written in COBOL
(using interpretive code). The core of the system was written in COBOL.
The whole thing was fast, except for the interpreted code. I was brought
in to write a native code compiler (in fact, I did it for two very
different machine architectures).
It all worked wel, except...the language was not defined by its manual,
but by what the compiler accepted. The original writer had no real idea
about parsing, and it accepted some very weird stuff - which people used.
It ended up that my compiler had to do the same, just because of the
large installed base.
--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395448 is a reply to message #395447] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 17:54 |
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Originally posted by: Dallas
On 6/5/2020 4:27 PM, Bob Eager wrote:
> On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 18:27:41 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But many
>> people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>
> Indeed. There was once (actually, still is) a large multinational company
> who invented a language for building applications on their system. Thew
> compiler was written in COBOL. The run time system was written in COBOL
> (using interpretive code). The core of the system was written in COBOL.
>
> The whole thing was fast, except for the interpreted code. I was brought
> in to write a native code compiler (in fact, I did it for two very
> different machine architectures).
>
> It all worked wel, except...the language was not defined by its manual,
> but by what the compiler accepted. The original writer had no real idea
> about parsing, and it accepted some very weird stuff - which people used.
> It ended up that my compiler had to do the same, just because of the
> large installed base.
>
>
>
I created a language once like that. It just grew organically to whatever suited me at the time.
No one used it but me, and the output was the same code in a different, but well-defined language.
I guess today we would call it a transpiler.
I took great pains to make sure all the "comments" in my language were preserved during the
translation and that the output was respectably formatted. I did archive the output code into
production.
The output code from my transpiler was the assembly language for the T.I 9900 CPU
The programs I wrote in it were device drivers. I just got bored of writing them in assembly, so I
invented my own language.
I even experimented with right-hand side from left-hand side assignment syntax like
1 + 2 => variable
as well as the more traditional
variable <= 1 + 2
I don't remember actually using the right-hand side assigned from left-hand side variation too
often though.
It was just something I wanted in my language.
I could just drop actual assembly code in anywhere if I did not have a high level way to express it
and the transpiler would just pass it through to the output.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395449 is a reply to message #395421] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 18:02 |
Robin Vowels
Messages: 426
Registered: July 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 2:45:17 AM UTC+10, Dallas wrote:
> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
> English-only words like "if" and "else" ?
No problem with PL/I, for it's possible to substitute foreign-
language words for the keywords.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395451 is a reply to message #395449] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 18:40 |
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Originally posted by: Dallas
On 6/5/2020 5:02 PM, robin.vowels@gmail.com wrote:
> On Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 2:45:17 AM UTC+10, Dallas wrote:
>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use
>> English-only words like "if" and "else" ?
>
> No problem with PL/I, for it's possible to substitute foreign-
> language words for the keywords.
>
I'd have to inventory the syntax, but I wonder if it is always possible to find words that flow
naturally using non-English words. I don't think the adjective-noun order differences would come
into play, nor the article gender differences.
So, there might not be many irregularities.
Do you swap them wholesale from preexisting sets of words? Or can you get creative?
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395452 is a reply to message #395447] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 18:44 |
scott
Messages: 4237
Registered: February 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> writes:
> On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 18:27:41 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But many
>> people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>
> Indeed. There was once (actually, still is) a large multinational company
> who invented a language for building applications on their system. Thew
> compiler was written in COBOL. The run time system was written in COBOL
> (using interpretive code). The core of the system was written in COBOL.
Was it this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC_4GL
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395453 is a reply to message #395452] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 19:18 |
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Originally posted by: Bob Eager
On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 22:44:30 +0000, Scott Lurndal wrote:
> Bob Eager <news0073@eager.cx> writes:
>> On Fri, 05 Jun 2020 18:27:41 +0000, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>
>>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But many
>>> people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>>
>> Indeed. There was once (actually, still is) a large multinational
>> company who invented a language for building applications on their
>> system. Thew compiler was written in COBOL. The run time system was
>> written in COBOL (using interpretive code). The core of the system was
>> written in COBOL.
>
> Was it this?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LINC_4GL
No. But contractually I cannot say what it was.
--
Using UNIX since v6 (1975)...
Use the BIG mirror service in the UK:
http://www.mirrorservice.org
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395455 is a reply to message #395421] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 20:10 |
John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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In article <rbdsqs$v2o$1@dont-email.me>, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use English-only words like "if" and
> "else" ?
In my experience, programming languages are what they are and people
long ago realized that demanding mutant versions of languages with
localized keywords was just shooting yourself in the foot.
The documentation, of course, has to be in French.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395458 is a reply to message #395455] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 20:44 |
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Originally posted by: Dallas
On 6/5/2020 7:For example, 10 PM, John Levine wrote:
> In article <rbdsqs$v2o$1@dont-email.me>, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use English-only words like "if" and
>> "else" ?
>
> In my experience, programming languages are what they are and people
> long ago realized that demanding mutant versions of languages with
> localized keywords was just shooting yourself in the foot.
>
> The documentation, of course, has to be in French.
>
>
>
Interesting ... so unless I have possession of some docs in French I can't use a computer language?
For example, no "Bash shell" and GNU utilities unless I have a French translation of all man pages
that accompany it?
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395459 is a reply to message #395458] |
Fri, 05 June 2020 21:54 |
John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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In article <rbeotg$pk8$1@dont-email.me>, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
> On 6/5/2020 7:For example, 10 PM, John Levine wrote:
>> In article <rbdsqs$v2o$1@dont-email.me>, Dallas <dallas@texas.usa> wrote:
>>> What is Canada's stance regarding programming languages that use English-only words like "if" and
>>> "else" ?
>>
>> In my experience, programming languages are what they are and people
>> long ago realized that demanding mutant versions of languages with
>> localized keywords was just shooting yourself in the foot.
>>
>> The documentation, of course, has to be in French.
>>
> Interesting ... so unless I have possession of some docs in French I can't use a computer language?
No, of course not. If you want to sell them to the Quebec government,
you need to document stuff in French.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395466 is a reply to message #395437] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 01:58 |
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Originally posted by: Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson
On 06/06/2020 2:33 am, Peter Flass wrote:
> Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> wrote:
>> On 04/06/2020 2:09 am, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>>> Now if I were to sit down and design The Perfect Keyboard For Me And
>>> Only Me (i.e. a_custom_ keyboard, rather than a "better" keyboard), I
>>> might get as picky as you. I'd certainly have the numeric keypad
>>> duplicated on the left (farther left than the function keys) since I do
>>> number-pad entry more quickly with my left hand, and for a couple
>>> decades my wish list included having that be a hexadecimal one instead
>>> of decimal, because -- guess what! -- I was typing hex into things a lot
>>> then. Oh yeah, the Perfect Keyboard For Me And Only Me would have to
>>> change depending on what I was doing a lot of during different periods.
>>> All in all, a few of the layouts of mass-produced keyboards have sucked
>>> pretty badly, but most have been adequate, decent, or better, for a wide
>>> range of tasks. (Note that choice of switches / mechanical design has
>>> sucked on a lot more keyboards than layout has.)
>>
>> Nowadays you can buy a separate number pad, and keep to the left of your
>> keyboard. Now whether that's something you'd find useful is a different
>> story. A hexadecimal number pad would equally be useful, and I wonder
>> idly if any custom keyboard people have done that before?
>>
>> There is a thriving community of people who make their own custom
>> keyboards. So if you really, really want to make a keyboard for you
>> and only you, you'll find a lot of resources and communities online;
>> some I've been told, in Japanese.
>>
>
> My idea of a perfect keyboard is one with fewer keys rather than more. For
> example, I’d have the numeric pad triple up as not only numeric and control
> functions, as at present, but also as a pad of PF keys. This would
> eliminate the top row of PF keys and shrink the keyboard vertically. Then
> I’d get rid of that d@mn “windows” key. (I have a special-order 101-key
> keyboard without one)
>
Apart from the Japanese Discord community (I don't see a point to link
it here) there's also this, in English,
https://kb.ai03.me/
where you may find something you like, or look at the open source github
links or join the Discord server (in English).
--
Johann | email: invalid -> com | www.myrkraverk.com/blog/
I'm not from the Internet, I just work there. | twitter: @myrkraverk
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395483 is a reply to message #395420] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 12:15 |
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Originally posted by: JimP
On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 09:27:07 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
wrote:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>> wrote:
>
>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and cant order (
>>> except for health and safety, of course)
>
>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>
> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
> government.
>
> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>
> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>
> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
> small.
>
> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>
> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>
> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>
> John Savard
Well, there are places in the US where English isn't the dominant
language, and there are signs in those other languages. But I don't
know of any, although it might be possible, where such signs are
required.
Cajun French in Louisana, Spanish in the Southwest, and various Native
American areas where they are the larger population.
There is a history in the US where children were removed from Native
tribes and sent off to school. In those schools, run by people
claiming to be Christians, who beat the children for speaking their
tribe's language.
I know that in some parts of the US, people can get a voting ballot in
the language they grew up learning. When I graduated from high school
I had to take 4 years of Spanish or Latin. Latin class was reserved
for kids who had stated they were going to be doctors, lawyers, etc.
My grades, plus I came from the poor side of town, I was told,
prevented me from taking Latin. The Spanish taught was more of a
formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
--
Jim
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395485 is a reply to message #395466] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 14:10 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> wrote:
> On 06/06/2020 2:33 am, Peter Flass wrote:
>> Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@myrkraverk.invalid> wrote:
>>> On 04/06/2020 2:09 am, Daphne Eftychia Arthur wrote:
>>>> Now if I were to sit down and design The Perfect Keyboard For Me And
>>>> Only Me (i.e. a_custom_ keyboard, rather than a "better" keyboard), I
>>>> might get as picky as you. I'd certainly have the numeric keypad
>>>> duplicated on the left (farther left than the function keys) since I do
>>>> number-pad entry more quickly with my left hand, and for a couple
>>>> decades my wish list included having that be a hexadecimal one instead
>>>> of decimal, because -- guess what! -- I was typing hex into things a lot
>>>> then. Oh yeah, the Perfect Keyboard For Me And Only Me would have to
>>>> change depending on what I was doing a lot of during different periods.
>>>> All in all, a few of the layouts of mass-produced keyboards have sucked
>>>> pretty badly, but most have been adequate, decent, or better, for a wide
>>>> range of tasks. (Note that choice of switches / mechanical design has
>>>> sucked on a lot more keyboards than layout has.)
>>>
>>> Nowadays you can buy a separate number pad, and keep to the left of your
>>> keyboard. Now whether that's something you'd find useful is a different
>>> story. A hexadecimal number pad would equally be useful, and I wonder
>>> idly if any custom keyboard people have done that before?
>>>
>>> There is a thriving community of people who make their own custom
>>> keyboards. So if you really, really want to make a keyboard for you
>>> and only you, you'll find a lot of resources and communities online;
>>> some I've been told, in Japanese.
>>>
>>
>> My idea of a perfect keyboard is one with fewer keys rather than more. For
>> example, I’d have the numeric pad triple up as not only numeric and control
>> functions, as at present, but also as a pad of PF keys. This would
>> eliminate the top row of PF keys and shrink the keyboard vertically. Then
>> I’d get rid of that d@mn “windows” key. (I have a special-order 101-key
>> keyboard without one)
>>
>
> Apart from the Japanese Discord community (I don't see a point to link
> it here) there's also this, in English,
>
> https://kb.ai03.me/
>
> where you may find something you like, or look at the open source github
> links or join the Discord server (in English).
>
Interesting. Everyone has an idea of what the perfect keyboard would look
like.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395486 is a reply to message #395483] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 14:10 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 09:27:07 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
> wrote:
>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>>> wrote:
>>
>>>> Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and cant order (
>>>> except for health and safety, of course)
>>
>>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>>
>> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
>> government.
>>
>> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>>
>> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
>> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
>> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
>> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
>> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>>
>> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
>> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
>> small.
>>
>> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
>> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
>> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
>> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
>> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>>
>> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
>> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
>> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>>
>> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
>> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
>> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
>> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
>> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>>
>> John Savard
>
> Well, there are places in the US where English isn't the dominant
> language, and there are signs in those other languages. But I don't
> know of any, although it might be possible, where such signs are
> required.
>
> Cajun French in Louisana, Spanish in the Southwest, and various Native
> American areas where they are the larger population.
Lots of languages. Vietnamese in California, and I expect Texas and
Louisiana, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. No one tells shopowners what
language their signs must be in.
>
> There is a history in the US where children were removed from Native
> tribes and sent off to school. In those schools, run by people
> claiming to be Christians, who beat the children for speaking their
> tribe's language.
>
> I know that in some parts of the US, people can get a voting ballot in
> the language they grew up learning. When I graduated from high school
> I had to take 4 years of Spanish or Latin. Latin class was reserved
> for kids who had stated they were going to be doctors, lawyers, etc.
I’ve seen official stuff published in more languages than I knew existed.
>
> My grades, plus I came from the poor side of town, I was told,
> prevented me from taking Latin. The Spanish taught was more of a
> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
Probably wouldn’t do too well in Mexico, either. Perhaps US schools should
teach Mexican Spanish.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395495 is a reply to message #395486] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 17:14 |
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Originally posted by: JimP
On Sat, 6 Jun 2020 11:10:27 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
wrote:
> JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 09:27:07 -0700 (PDT), Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca>
>> wrote:
>>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 10:05:43 AM UTC-6, JimP wrote:
>>>> On Fri, 5 Jun 2020 07:53:40 -0700, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> > Seems like massive overreach to tell people what they can and can?t order (
>>>> > except for health and safety, of course)
>>>
>>>> I would call it asinine and childishly pathetic.
>>>
>>> Quebec language legislation goes back to Bill 22, introduced under the Bourassa
>>> government.
>>>
>>> Bill 22 had three main provisions.
>>>
>>> One was legitimate enough: companies with over 50 employees would be required to
>>> operate in the French language. This was a response to the fact that in Quebec,
>>> their home province, unlingual French speakers faced limited employment
>>> opportunities, with companies often preferring to operate in English and hire
>>> from the English-speaking minority in Quebec.
>>>
>>> However, even that was discriminatory, since the English-speaking minority was a
>>> large enough community that businesses serving it would not necessarily be
>>> small.
>>>
>>> Another provision was that only children whose parents attended English-language
>>> schools in Quebec could send their children to English-language schools.
>>> Eventually, this was partly stricken down by the courts as it affected people
>>> coming from other parts of Canada due to mobility rights (equivalent to the 14th
>>> Amendment), but it still affects immigrants.
>>>
>>> Also, stores had to have signs - not just outdoor signs, but also the ones in
>>> the aisles for finding things - in which the French language predominated.
>>> Outdoor signs could only be in French, but the courts overturned that in 1988.
>>>
>>> This kind of legislation may well be incomprehensible to Americans, as it would
>>> be un-Constitutional in several respects. Had there been a State in which the
>>> majority of people spoke Spanish, and they were concerned that the Spanish
>>> language was eroding because of the economic dominance of English, then the
>>> United States might see similar issues, but no analogous situation exists.
>>>
>>> John Savard
>>
>> Well, there are places in the US where English isn't the dominant
>> language, and there are signs in those other languages. But I don't
>> know of any, although it might be possible, where such signs are
>> required.
>>
>> Cajun French in Louisana, Spanish in the Southwest, and various Native
>> American areas where they are the larger population.
>
> Lots of languages. Vietnamese in California, and I expect Texas and
> Louisiana, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. No one tells shopowners what
> language their signs must be in.
True, I have seen a few with signs in both languages. But not required
to do so.
>> There is a history in the US where children were removed from Native
>> tribes and sent off to school. In those schools, run by people
>> claiming to be Christians, who beat the children for speaking their
>> tribe's language.
>>
>> I know that in some parts of the US, people can get a voting ballot in
>> the language they grew up learning. When I graduated from high school
>> I had to take 4 years of Spanish or Latin. Latin class was reserved
>> for kids who had stated they were going to be doctors, lawyers, etc.
>
> Ive seen official stuff published in more languages than I knew existed.
>
>>
>> My grades, plus I came from the poor side of town, I was told,
>> prevented me from taking Latin. The Spanish taught was more of a
>> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
>
> Probably wouldnt do too well in Mexico, either. Perhaps US schools should
> teach Mexican Spanish.
My high school Spanish teachers, as far as I remember, were from
Columbia, Cuba, and Venezuela. I think the other one was from Costa
Rica, but she may have been from somewhere else. Why the US school
systems wanted to teach a non-standard Spanish, I have no idea. My
junior college Spanish teacher was Anglo, but I remember her saying
she had grown up in a country where Spanish is the primary language.
No idea where she learned French except at university.
My first trip in the US Navy overseas, we stopped at Brest, France. I
got to photograph the U-boat pens still there. The French Navy uses
them for coastal patrol boats. Well, that was last century, but they
are likely still there.
One of the bread shops there had a sign in the window 'American high
school French spoken here'. One of the daughters had been in the US as
an exchange student.
--
Jim
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395500 is a reply to message #395483] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 19:12 |
Joy Beeson
Messages: 159
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:15:44 -0500, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
> The Spanish taught was more of a
> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
>
My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. If you
spoke Mexican to a Cuban, or Argentinian to a Spaniard, he might not
have any idea what you meant.
But this was over sixty years ago.
--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395501 is a reply to message #395500] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 19:40 |
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Originally posted by: J. Clarke
On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 19:12:25 -0400, Joy Beeson
<jbeeson@invalid.net.invalid> wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:15:44 -0500, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Spanish taught was more of a
>> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
>>
> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. If you
> spoke Mexican to a Cuban, or Argentinian to a Spaniard, he might not
> have any idea what you meant.
>
> But this was over sixty years ago.
Seems to be somewhat universal. A friend of mine who grew up in an
Arabic-speaking household says that when she goes anywhere that isn't
populated by Arabs, the Arabic-speaking Muslims speak very formally.
She described it as being like in English she would say "Hey, dude,
'sup" and they would come back with "Dear lady it is a great honor to
meet you, how may I be of service".
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395503 is a reply to message #395501] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 21:22 |
John Levine
Messages: 1405
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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In article <56aodfhl7gtn1d0nclk400q4e72a4ul7ds@4ax.com>,
J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
>> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
>> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. ...
> Seems to be somewhat universal. A friend of mine who grew up in an
> Arabic-speaking household ...
Same with German. Everyone learns formal Hochdeutch in school and
speaks a local version at home, which outsiders often can't
understand.
--
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies",
Please consider the environment before reading this e-mail. https://jl.ly
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395504 is a reply to message #395500] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 22:44 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 5:12:27 PM UTC-6, Joy Beeson wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:15:44 -0500, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The Spanish taught was more of a
>> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
>>
> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. If you
> spoke Mexican to a Cuban, or Argentinian to a Spaniard, he might not
> have any idea what you meant.
>
> But this was over sixty years ago.
In Canada, our English-language schools use American textbooks to teach French.
So we learn to speak French as it is spoken in the streets of Paris, and not as
it is spoken in Quebec.
John Savard
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395507 is a reply to message #395504] |
Sat, 06 June 2020 23:11 |
Alfred Falk
Messages: 195
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> wrote in
news:9682945a-9782-4e32-b701-29f890dd1c99o@googlegroups.com:
> On Saturday, June 6, 2020 at 5:12:27 PM UTC-6, Joy Beeson wrote:
>> On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 11:15:44 -0500, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> The Spanish taught was more of a
>>> formal version, as I found out when my ship docked in Spain.
>>>
>> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
>> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
>> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. If you
>> spoke Mexican to a Cuban, or Argentinian to a Spaniard, he might not
>> have any idea what you meant.
>>
>> But this was over sixty years ago.
>
> In Canada, our English-language schools use American textbooks to teach
> French.
>
> So we learn to speak French as it is spoken in the streets of Paris,
> and not as it is spoken in Quebec.
Hmm... It was more than half a century ago, but I had 5 years of French in
school (Manitoba). The text books were all Canadian. The language taught
was formal, but closer to Quebec. (One story in the books had a family
going to France and the children discovering differences, like "Parquer le
car" instead of "stationer l'auto".
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395514 is a reply to message #395503] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 05:46 |
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Originally posted by: Andy Walker
On 07/06/2020 02:22, John Levine wrote:
> In article <56aodfhl7gtn1d0nclk400q4e72a4ul7ds@4ax.com>,
> J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
>>> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
>>> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. ...
>> Seems to be somewhat universal. A friend of mine who grew up in an
>> Arabic-speaking household ...
> Same with German. Everyone learns formal Hochdeutch in school and
> speaks a local version at home, which outsiders often can't
> understand.
You don't have to go that far; it's the same with English.
"Everyone" learns a standard English, but even within England there
are mutually incomprehensible versions spoken in major cities. The
formal versions spoken in [eg] the UK, the USA, Australia and India
would by now surely have diverged almost as far had it not been for
the unifying influence of films and TV that keeps us all abreast of
the changes.
--
Andy Walker,
Nottingham.
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| Brest U-boat pens (was: Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395515 is a reply to message #395495] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 06:01 |
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Originally posted by: Kerr-Mudd,John
On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 21:14:57 GMT, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
[]
> My first trip in the US Navy overseas, we stopped at Brest, France. I
> got to photograph the U-boat pens still there. The French Navy uses
> them for coastal patrol boats. Well, that was last century, but they
> are likely still there.
>
"Impossible Engineering" did a feature; they were built to withstand a
direct hit by a huge bomb; demolition would be a massive undertaking.
[]
--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395519 is a reply to message #395503] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 10:58 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> wrote:
> In article <56aodfhl7gtn1d0nclk400q4e72a4ul7ds@4ax.com>,
> J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
>>> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
>>> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. ...
>
>> Seems to be somewhat universal. A friend of mine who grew up in an
>> Arabic-speaking household ...
>
> Same with German. Everyone learns formal Hochdeutch in school and
> speaks a local version at home, which outsiders often can't
> understand.
>
Or British English.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395520 is a reply to message #395425] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 11:05 |
Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-06-05, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Someone write an ALGOL compiler that used French keywords and French error
> messages.
[assume you meant "wrote"]
I believe there's also French C.
Regards,
Niklas
--
"Avoid hyperbole at all costs, its the most destructive argument on
the planet" - Mark McIntyre in comp.lang.c
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395521 is a reply to message #395503] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 11:37 |
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Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig
John Levine <johnl@taugh.com> schrieb:
> In article <56aodfhl7gtn1d0nclk400q4e72a4ul7ds@4ax.com>,
> J. Clarke <jclarke.873638@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> My Spanish teacher told us upfront that she was teaching us Castilian.
>>> She explained that if you spoke Castilian to a native speaker, he
>>> would think you were stuck up, but he would understand you. ...
>
>> Seems to be somewhat universal. A friend of mine who grew up in an
>> Arabic-speaking household ...
>
> Same with German. Everyone learns formal Hochdeutch in school and
> speaks a local version at home, which outsiders often can't
> understand.
Certainly not true, at least not in Germany. There are some
dialects, but most of them are mutually understandable. TV
has played a large role there.
Switzerland, though... the written language of Switzerland is a
variant of Hochdeutsch with smaller variations (they don't have a ß,
for example, they use ss), and some words regarding administration
are different.
Their local dialects are almost impossible for Germans to
understand, and there is enough variation in these dialects that
some people from one part of German-speaking Switzerland have
trouple understanding people from another part of German-speaking
Switzerland.
When the Swiss use messaging apps, they don't usually use the
standard spelling, but a made-up variant of their own dialect.
This can lead to people not undersanding each other's messages,
which some people find rather amusing.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395523 is a reply to message #395441] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 12:52 |
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Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig
Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12:27:42 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>
>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
>> many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>
>> Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
>> I'm there, doing that.
>
> I'm sorry, but usually what *counts* is getting existing programs to work with
> the least amount of trouble. So anything less than strict upwards compatibility,
> even with the quirks and undocumented features of earlier compilers, is a major
> problem.
People could just stick with old compilers then.
However, they want the performance of new architectures,
vectorization, aggressive optimization, GPU offloading, parallel
processing, allocatable variables, GUIs, and everything else.
However, they want that particular aggressive optimization only
very specifically, where it doesn't happen to break their own
code. Then, it's evil (of course).
> Often, the money just isn't there to re-write an old program to bring it up to
> current standards.
Problem is, the particular point in question has been illegal since
subroutines and functions were introduced to Fortran, i.e. Fortran II,
the second ever Fortran compiler.
Oh well...
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395525 is a reply to message #395523] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 13:21 |
Quadibloc
Messages: 4399
Registered: June 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On Sunday, June 7, 2020 at 10:52:27 AM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
> However, they want the performance of new architectures,
> vectorization, aggressive optimization, GPU offloading, parallel
> processing, allocatable variables, GUIs, and everything else.
> However, they want that particular aggressive optimization only
> very specifically, where it doesn't happen to break their own
> code. Then, it's evil (of course).
And, what, the people who write the compilers aren't smart enough to write
perfectly compatible compilers that take advantage of all these performance
increases?
Of course people are unreasonable and they want to have their cake and eat it
too. Is this surprising?
John Savard
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| Re: Brest U-boat pens (was: Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395526 is a reply to message #395515] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 13:58 |
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Originally posted by: Kerr-Mudd,John
On Sun, 07 Jun 2020 10:01:51 GMT, "Kerr-Mudd,John"
<notsaying@invalid.org> wrote:
> On Sat, 06 Jun 2020 21:14:57 GMT, JimP <solosam90@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> []
>> My first trip in the US Navy overseas, we stopped at Brest, France. I
>> got to photograph the U-boat pens still there. The French Navy uses
>> them for coastal patrol boats. Well, that was last century, but they
>> are likely still there.
>>
>
> "Impossible Engineering" did a feature; they were built to withstand a
> direct hit by a huge bomb; demolition would be a massive undertaking.
>
> []
>
Well, It's "Abandoned Engineering" and it was on (repeat) just now! It's
in the town of Lorient:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keroman_Submarine_Base
--
Bah, and indeed, Humbug.
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395527 is a reply to message #395523] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 14:03 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12:27:42 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>
>>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
>>> many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>>
>>> Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
>>> I'm there, doing that.
>>
>> I'm sorry, but usually what *counts* is getting existing programs to work with
>> the least amount of trouble. So anything less than strict upwards compatibility,
>> even with the quirks and undocumented features of earlier compilers, is a major
>> problem.
>
> People could just stick with old compilers then.
Well, no. Upward compatibility doesn’t imply that new programs have to be
written to the lowest common denominator, only that you shouldn’t have to
rewrite programs to move to a new compiler.
>
> However, they want the performance of new architectures,
> vectorization, aggressive optimization, GPU offloading, parallel
> processing, allocatable variables, GUIs, and everything else.
> However, they want that particular aggressive optimization only
> very specifically, where it doesn't happen to break their own
> code. Then, it's evil (of course).
Most optimizing compilers offer multiple levels of optimization, including
no optimization, and usually offer ways to turn it on and off for specific
sections of code.
>
>> Often, the money just isn't there to re-write an old program to bring it up to
>> current standards.
>
> Problem is, the particular point in question has been illegal since
> subroutines and functions were introduced to Fortran, i.e. Fortran II,
> the second ever Fortran compiler.
>
I forgot the “particular point in question”, but often compilers will
support even illegal code from older versions, if it was used widely
enough.
--
Pete
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395529 is a reply to message #395527] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 15:08 |
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Originally posted by: Thomas Koenig
Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:
> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12:27:42 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>>
>>>> There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>>>> Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
>>>> many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>>>
>>>> Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
>>>> I'm there, doing that.
>>>
>>> I'm sorry, but usually what *counts* is getting existing programs to work with
>>> the least amount of trouble. So anything less than strict upwards compatibility,
>>> even with the quirks and undocumented features of earlier compilers, is a major
>>> problem.
>>
>> People could just stick with old compilers then.
> Well, no. Upward compatibility doesn’t imply that new programs have to be
> written to the lowest common denominator, only that you shouldn’t have to
> rewrite programs to move to a new compiler.
If you used a language construct that was illegal all the time,
sooner or later the compilers will (hopefully) catch up with you,
one way or another. The nice way is an error message, the
not-so-nice way is silently failing.
An example:
Let's look at argument size mismatches that "worked" on
little-endian systems like a VAX. Should IBM have changed their
compilers for big-endian MVS systems to match what the VAX did?
Should argument mismatches be caught, in your opinion? (If you
write C, do you use prototypes?)
> Most optimizing compilers offer multiple levels of optimization, including
> no optimization, and usually offer ways to turn it on and off for specific
> sections of code.
And most people who care about speed use -Ofast (or whatever)
without knowing or caring what it does :-|
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395530 is a reply to message #395522] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 15:56 |
Niklas Karlsson
Messages: 265
Registered: January 2012
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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On 2020-06-07, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Niklas Karlsson <anksil@yahoo.se> wrote:
>> I believe there's also French C.
>>
>
> I saw ALGOL a while ago. C only has about five words, doesn’t it?
Yes, I can't imagine performing the translation was very taxing.
Niklas
--
I'd like to think that when I am falling to my doom off a crumbly limestone
cliff I won't be saying, "Aaaaaaaaaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!" but rather, "You know,
they really should put that fence further back."
-- David Morgan-Mar
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| Re: What ASCII Should Have Been [message #395531 is a reply to message #395529] |
Sun, 07 June 2020 16:00 |
Peter Flass
Messages: 8375
Registered: December 2011
Karma: 0
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Senior Member |
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Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> schrieb:
>> Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> wrote:
>>> Quadibloc <jsavard@ecn.ab.ca> schrieb:
>>>> On Friday, June 5, 2020 at 12:27:42 PM UTC-6, Thomas Koenig wrote:
>>>>
>>>> > There were a few dodgy features that were indeed removed from the
>>>> > Fortran standards, but most compilers retain them anyway. But
>>>> > many people wrote illegal code in the day, and that can be aproblem.
>>>>
>>>> > Even today, you can catch flak for pointing out these errors to people.
>>>> > I'm there, doing that.
>>>>
>>>> I'm sorry, but usually what *counts* is getting existing programs to work with
>>>> the least amount of trouble. So anything less than strict upwards compatibility,
>>>> even with the quirks and undocumented features of earlier compilers, is a major
>>>> problem.
>>>
>>> People could just stick with old compilers then.
>
>> Well, no. Upward compatibility doesn’t imply that new programs have to be
>> written to the lowest common denominator, only that you shouldn’t have to
>> rewrite programs to move to a new compiler.
>
> If you used a language construct that was illegal all the time,
> sooner or later the compilers will (hopefully) catch up with you,
> one way or another. The nice way is an error message, the
> not-so-nice way is silently failing.
>
> An example:
>
> Let's look at argument size mismatches that "worked" on
> little-endian systems like a VAX. Should IBM have changed their
> compilers for big-endian MVS systems to match what the VAX did?
Changing to a different architecture is a whole different problem.
>
> Should argument mismatches be caught, in your opinion? (If you
> write C, do you use prototypes?)
I’ve forgotten half my C. A warning message might be appropriate.
>
>> Most optimizing compilers offer multiple levels of optimization, including
>> no optimization, and usually offer ways to turn it on and off for specific
>> sections of code.
>
> And most people who care about speed use -Ofast (or whatever)
> without knowing or caring what it does :-|
>
Rule #1: If it doesn’t work, first turn off optimization.
--
Pete
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