Re: pragmas proposal - please read and comment

> On 11,Jan2022, at 11:40 AM, Norm Tovey-Walsh <norm@saxonica.com> wrote:
> 

[Several good points elided here.]

> What are our options? ...
> 
> Of course, if we branch out to Unicode more broadly, there are a lot
> more single character options: ⟦…⟧, ⧼…⧽, ﴾…﴿, «…», ⟘…⟙, ⊂…⊃, ¿…?, ¡…!,
> etc., etc.
> 
> You could sell me on any one of those with some sort of multi-character
> ASCII alternative for the keyboard impaired.

> ¿…? 

Cool!

I had not thought about ¿…?; that would have a certain appeal for me,
partly because the question marks echo those of processing
instructions in SGML and XML.  Also, on a default MacOS keyboard,
option-question mark produces the inverted question mark, so it’s
relatively easy to type.  I have not yet worked out how to make it
simple to type on my Linux box, but I have little doubt it’s easy.

The alternative ¡ … ! has most of the same virtues, but its SGML echos
are of declarations and not of processing instructions, so it doesn’t
attract me quite as much.

Perhaps ^? and ?^ would work for the ASCII shorthand?  (Or ?- … -?,
which is inspired by Prolog syntax in ways I won’t try to explain.)
In some contexts, I would be happy with <? … ?> as the ASCII
equivalent, but since I expect I will frequently be embedding ixml
grammars in XML documents, using angle brackets doesn’t appeal very
much to me.  Hmm.  But I don’t have to use the ASCII alternative; I
can just have ¿ … ? in the source.  So, OK, yes, <? … ?> would work
for me as ASCII-keyboard delimiters.  Admittedly, angle brackets are
not terribly convenient on some keyboards I’ve seen, where they
require a special shift key (AltGr) and I’m not sure what other kinds
of contortions.

Michael

********************************************
C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
Black Mesa Technologies LLC
cmsmcq@blackmesatech.com
http://www.blackmesatech.com
********************************************

Received on Wednesday, 12 January 2022 00:20:34 UTC