The Harm of hard-wrapping Lines

J

Joona I Palaste

Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following
I think the standard for NGs is to be English, unless specified
otherwise, just because they developed first and because their
users speak English. German newsgroups, for instance, are part of
the de.* hierarchy. I strongly suspect there are Chinese NGs, too.
It's no restriction, just a convention. It's like not going into
an English-speaking restaurant and talking Chinese to the
waiter/waitress for ordering food.

I'd think talking to a waiter/waitress for ordering food without going
to a restaurant first is a bit unusual, no matter what language you're
speaking in.
 
U

Ulrich Hobelmann

Joona said:
Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following



I'd think talking to a waiter/waitress for ordering food without going
to a restaurant first is a bit unusual, no matter what language you're
speaking in.

No, I meant the convention is, "not (going ... and ordering in
Chinese ...)".
 
J

Joona I Palaste

Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following
No, I meant the convention is, "not (going ... and ordering in
Chinese ...)".

Oh, right. I read it as "(not going ...) and (ordering in Chinese ...)".
One of the wonders of ambiguiety in natural languages.

--
/-- Joona Palaste ([email protected]) ------------- Finland --------\
\-------------------------------------------------------- rules! --------/
"You have moved your mouse, for these changes to take effect you must shut down
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- Karri Kalpio
 
R

Richard Bos

Sunnan said:
.iecaizo'o

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Richard
 
G

GuyBrush Treepwood

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Sending methods to objects? e.g. foo.bar()
 
R

Richard Bos

GuyBrush Treepwood said:
Sending methods to objects? e.g. foo.bar()

All languages in which you can send methods to objects are evil, too :p
But no, I consider that to be punctuation: separating the word "foo"
from the word "bar". In at least a couple of kinds of MS Basic, you
could write this.is.a.single.variable.name and it would in fact refer to
a single variable, not to parts of a structure.

Richard
 
S

Sunnan

Richard said:
All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned.

In Scheme you can use the period sign in identifyers:

(define this.is.unusual 4)
this.is.unusual
=> 4

But I've never seen this in practice. I don't see where the evilness
comes from.

In Lojban a full stop is punctuation - meaning a small pause when
speaking - it's just that this punctuation is used differently than in
English. I wouldn't call it "part of words".

..e'anaizo'o mi cu tolcru.zo'o le lojbo lenu lo krinu cu drata
 
A

Anton van Straaten

Richard said:
All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Who can disagree with that? However, no languages actually do this.
They use periods, or even dots, instead. While these may look the same
as a "full stop" to the untrained eye, they can be distinguished by
their lack of evilness when used in suspiciously un-punctuation-like
ways. In addition, only full stops have a British accent (usually
Gloucestershire).

Anton
 
M

Matthias Buelow

All languages in which you can send methods to objects are evil, too :p
But no, I consider that to be punctuation: separating the word "foo"
from the word "bar". In at least a couple of kinds of MS Basic, you
could write this.is.a.single.variable.name and it would in fact refer to
a single variable, not to parts of a structure.
like...

(define this.is.a.single.variable.name 'hello.richard-boos) ; no values returned
this.is.a.single.variable.name 'hello.richard-boos

;-)

mkb.

[Of course we all know Scheme and Lisp are evil.. *cackling-maniacally*]
 
J

Jeffrey Cunningham

Maybe he's writing about english usage in Chinese?
(I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt :-}

-jeff
 

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