Why prefer != over <> for Python 3.0?

[Torsten Bronger]

Hallöchen!

Bjoern Schliessmann writes:

> Torsten Bronger wrote:
>
>> Emacs is generally not regarded as being convenient, however, it
>> has very strong input methods.  I type "\gtrless" and get "?", or
>> "\forall" and get "?".

Doesn't KNode support UTF-8?

> I wonder where the point of this is. :) Why use fancy unicode
> chars if they're not better to read (apart from not being readable
> with every font) and require at least the same amount of
> keypresses?

Who wants to minimize the number of keypresses?  We're not Perl
after all.  ;-)

As a general rule of thumb in typography, more glyph forms increase
readability.  APL is not readable at all but this is due to its
syntax I suppose.  I find hdante's excerpt very readable.

The only reason why we don't use those special characters is that
they aren't ASCII.  While ∀ or ∈ are questionable because Python
prefers English words instead of scientific symbols, ≠ or ≤ would be
certainly more legible than != or <=.  But they are not ASCII, so
there is no net benefit.

However, I'm quite sure that when Unicode has arrived almost
everywhere, some languages will start considering such characters in
their core syntax.  Python 3.0 allows for Unicode letters in
identifiers, and there's still room for improvement.

Tschö,
Torsten.

-- 
Torsten Bronger, aquisgrana, europa vetus
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