The Harm of hard-wrapping Lines

[Joona I Palaste]

Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following

I think the standard for NGs is to be English, unless specified
otherwise, just because they developed first and because their
users speak English. German newsgroups, for instance, are part of
the de.* hierarchy. I strongly suspect there are Chinese NGs, too.

It's no restriction, just a convention. It's like not going into
an English-speaking restaurant and talking Chinese to the
waiter/waitress for ordering food.

I'd think talking to a waiter/waitress for ordering food without going
to a restaurant first is a bit unusual, no matter what language you're
speaking in.

 

[Ulrich Hobelmann]

Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following



I'd think talking to a waiter/waitress for ordering food without going
to a restaurant first is a bit unusual, no matter what language you're
speaking in.

No, I meant the convention is, "not (going ... and ordering in
Chinese ...)".

 

[david.tolpin]

.i jimte mu'i lenu lo skamysnu pe lo bangu poi ke'a cu frica lei glico
ku'o cu zasti

Lojban should be banned, of course.

 

[Joona I Palaste]

Ulrich Hobelmann <[email protected]> scribbled the following

No, I meant the convention is, "not (going ... and ordering in
Chinese ...)".

Oh, right. I read it as "(not going ...) and (ordering in Chinese ...)".
One of the wonders of ambiguiety in natural languages.

--
/-- Joona Palaste ([email protected]) ------------- Finland --------\
\-------------------------------------------------------- rules! --------/
"You have moved your mouse, for these changes to take effect you must shut down
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- Karri Kalpio

 

[Mark McIntyre]

One of the wonders of ambiguiety in natural languages.

man eating tiger, anyone?

 

[Sunnan]

glico



Lojban should be banned, of course.

..iecaizo'o

 

[Richard Bos]

.iecaizo'o

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Richard

 

[GuyBrush Treepwood]

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Sending methods to objects? e.g. foo.bar()

 

[Richard Bos]

Sending methods to objects? e.g. foo.bar()

All languages in which you can send methods to objects are evil, too
But no, I consider that to be punctuation: separating the word "foo"
from the word "bar". In at least a couple of kinds of MS Basic, you
could write this.is.a.single.variable.name and it would in fact refer to
a single variable, not to parts of a structure.

Richard

 

[Sunnan]

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned.

In Scheme you can use the period sign in identifyers:

(define this.is.unusual 4)
this.is.unusual
=> 4

But I've never seen this in practice. I don't see where the evilness
comes from.

In Lojban a full stop is punctuation - meaning a small pause when
speaking - it's just that this punctuation is used differently than in
English. I wouldn't call it "part of words".

..e'anaizo'o mi cu tolcru.zo'o le lojbo lenu lo krinu cu drata

 

[Anton van Straaten]

All languages in which a full stop is anything other than punctuation
(i.e., in which they can be part of a word) are evil, and should be
banned. This goes for both natural, fictional human, and computer
languages (e.g., some Basics).

Who can disagree with that? However, no languages actually do this.
They use periods, or even dots, instead. While these may look the same
as a "full stop" to the untrained eye, they can be distinguished by
their lack of evilness when used in suspiciously un-punctuation-like
ways. In addition, only full stops have a British accent (usually
Gloucestershire).

Anton

 

[Matthias Buelow]

All languages in which you can send methods to objects are evil, too
But no, I consider that to be punctuation: separating the word "foo"
from the word "bar". In at least a couple of kinds of MS Basic, you
could write this.is.a.single.variable.name and it would in fact refer to
a single variable, not to parts of a structure.
like...

(define this.is.a.single.variable.name 'hello.richard-boos) ; no values returned
this.is.a.single.variable.name 'hello.richard-boos

;-)

mkb.

[Of course we all know Scheme and Lisp are evil.. *cackling-maniacally*]

 

[Jeffrey Cunningham]

Maybe he's writing about english usage in Chinese?
(I'm trying to give him the benefit of the doubt :-}

-jeff

 

[Oliver Bandel]

The Harm of hard-wrapping Lines

20050222

Computing Folks of the industry:

please spread the debunking of the truncating line business of the
fucking unix-loving fuckheads, as outlines here:
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/truncate_line.html

if this myth-debunking is known widely enough, there wouldn't be any

EOL ("\n") is like <p></p> or <br>

but it has a different syntax.

So it's logical too.

Ciao,
Oliver