Adding Unicode operators to D

Bruno Medeiros brunodomedeiros+spam at com.gmail
Fri Oct 24 09:28:51 PDT 2008


Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> Please vote up before the haters take it down, and discuss:
> 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/78rjk/allowing_unicode_operators_in_d_similarly_to/ 
> 
> 
> 
> Andrei

I'm unsure about this idea.

I don't know if it would be worthwhile, but I would say there are two 
aspects that likely would need to be observed for this to work out 
favorably:

* Having non-unicode versions of the symbols/keywords available in 
Unicode, such that non-Uunicode editing and viewing is always possible 
as a fallback. This has some important consequences though, such as 
making Unicode-symbol-usage unable to solve the shortage of brackets 
for, for example, the template instantiation syntax (because an 
alternative ASCII notation would still be necessary).

* Having a way to directly input the Unicode symbols in the keyboard. 
One reason is because of typing succinctness, and another, is because I 
find the alternative (have the editor/IDE automatically change an ASCII 
character sequence into a Unicode symbol) to have several disadvantages: 
First is that it doesn't work outside the editors/IDEs configured to do 
so, (which is a bummer, there is actually plenty of code written outside 
that: newsgroups, articles, forums, bug reports, IRC, etc.). Second, I 
personally like that the editor always require exactly N backspaces to 
erase N typed characters[*].

So, anyone knows if it is possible on Windows (I believe in Unix it is) 
to configure your keyboard mapping with custom settings? For example, if 
I press AltGr-O, it inputs some Unicode character of my choosing?



[*] As a sidenote, this is also why I don't like having my editor 
configured to insert 4 spaces on TAB-press. Unless, the editor is also 
smart enough to delete the 4 spaces on one backspace/delete and move 4 
spaces on one move cursor operation (arrow key press).

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - Software Developer, MSc. in CS/E graduate
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D


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