Non-ASCII languages (was: Re: style question)

[Nick Maclaren]

In article <slrneachsh.2t1.grahn+nntp at frailea.sa.invalid>,
Jorgen Grahn <grahn+nntp at snipabacken.dyndns.org> writes:
|> 
|> Possibly true, and definitely for Knuth.  But WYSIWYG was unknown at the
|> time; these people all programmed using fixed-width fonts, on teletypes or
|> character-mapped terminals. Hell, even full-screen editors were new and
|> controversial until the late 1970s!

A slight niggle - WYSIWYG wasn't unknown, just both rare and not yet
called that!  I have programmed using devices with half-line shifts,
real backspacing and so on - and some languages did mandate that a
character created by overprinting was to be treated as a composite
character.

Also, there were full-screen editors for things like IBM 3270s, though
they were absolutely ghastly for editing text (being designed for form
filling).

I agree with you that neither those days nor gimmicky approaches like
that of Fortress are worth pursuing.  One of the main reasons that
'program proving' has never taken off outside its cabal is that it
uses bizarre notations unlike anything else on earth that can't be
edited in a normal fashion.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.