Re: Change “~” to “!”

Nah!
~ has meant "not" for far longer than ! has.

My anecdote about !important was intended to poke fun at people who couldn't cope with things having different meanings in different languages.

I think !important in CSS a far better use of ! than in C etc., since at least the ! in CSS is closer to its real-life meaning. In real life ! doesn't mean 'not'.

Steven

On Monday 18 April 2022 11:27:38 (+02:00), Norm Tovey-Walsh wrote:

> Hello,
>
> As long as I’m whittering on about syntax, I might as well run this up
> the proverbial flagpole.
>
> In my experience, “~” is much more commonly associated with
> “approximately” than “not”. I understand that it is used for negation in
> some mathematical notations, but “in some mathematical notations” covers
> a lot of ground. To be honest, I’d expect “￢” rather than “~” in math.
> (I suppose “~” may be used in some notations to mean “complement” which
> is precisely what we mean in ixml, but even we don’t try to use the
> technical term “complement”.)
>
> Furthermore, I think “!” is *very* commonly associated with “not”. It’s
> used that way in a whole range of languages with a C-derived syntax.
> Steven even has an anecdote about how the use of “!” to mean important
> in CSS is confusing *because* so many people think of it as negation.
>
> I propose that we use “!” to negate a character set rather than “~”. In
> addition to being (IMHO) more obvious to users, it would free up “~” for
> some future use. Given our determination to use US ASCII, we need all
> the special characters we can get!
>
> Be seeing you,
> norm
>
> --
> Norm Tovey-Walsh
> Saxonica
>
--

Received on Monday, 18 April 2022 13:02:23 UTC