case sensitivity redux (was Re: Language change and code breaks)

[Bruce Sass]

Hi,

Welcome back.

On Tue, 31 Jul 2001, Alex Martelli wrote:
<...>
> For those of you who can't really empathize with other's issues
> and misfortunes, imagine being in a situation where you'd often
> need to have source code read out loud to you (e.g. over a
> phone), and/or you'd often want to dictate code (e.g. to some
> kind of voice-recognition, dictation-taking automatic system).
> What's case sensitivity giving you, that would compensate for
> the serious bother it causes in those situations?

Good point, but I'm not sure how much bother it will be.

Case sensitivity is so common in everyday life that the standard tools
must be able to work with it if they are to be (will be?) useful.  I
would imagine a VR system would let you say something along the lines
of...

"<runon> file input <equal-sign> <capitalize-words runon> file input"

...to get...

"fileinput = FileInput"

...and that may be easy compared to...

"one", "1", "1.", "1+0j"

...which would probably require a programming or python specific addon
module for the VR system (in this fantasy world I'm constructing).

As you suggested, tools could get pretty smart, maybe even
automatically translating between case-sensitive and case-insensitive.
e.g., source has "foo = Foo", VR user hears and uses "foo = fooa"

Of course, that is no reason to not explore case-insensitivity;
actually, it is a reason to explore it... someone has to figure out
where the problem areas are (hopefully before cataracts and glaucoma
catch up with me ;).


- Bruce