What is "Open Language"?

[Mark Waddingham]

On 2015-10-27 03:07, Mark Wieder wrote:
> Well. *This* certainly seems to have hit a nerve.

Indeed - perhaps a little bit - but honestly not with you!

Your pull request is a good one - it is minimal, focused and has 
tests... Tests the writing of which uncovered two bugs which need to be 
fixed in the engine. As PRs go, I couldn't really ask for much more.

However, the problem is that it attempts to 'fix' something which I 
think needs a little more thought about what the policy should be before 
it is 'fixed' - as it sets a precedent, the potential consequences of 
which are a combinatorial explosion in keywords.

> I would be fine with having everything be "hilite". Or with everything
> being "highlight". Or with everything being "blxxqvy". The point of
> the original bug report was that there's no consistency in the
> language. Sometimes you can use the "highlight" form and sometimes you
> have to use the "hilite" form. The problem is trying to remember which
> is which.

Indeed, I want consistency - however, going from a situation where 
things are inconsistent, and lax to one where they are consistent and 
strict-enough is really difficult to do piece-meal when you have 
literally millions of lines of code out there which depend on the 
current implementation.

> I agree with what you're saying about the proliferation of synonyms.
> I'm not wild about most of the other synonyms in the language
> either... "cd", "fld", etc (although I'd hate to give up "loc" and
> "rect") But right now we're trying to have it both ways. To my eye the
> "hilite" form looks cutesy and unprofessional, but I do understand
> developers are lazy and don't like typing, so I'd be fine with that.
> It's in the documentation already.

I'd prefer 'highlight' too - but with any long standing system which has 
evolved over a long time you have to respect the 'defacto standards' 
which have evolved within it, whether intended or unintended as a great 
many people will have learnt to depend on them.

> But really... let's move in the direction of some consistency.

Definitely. We just need to make sure we work out the best way to get 
there.

Warmest Regards,

Mark.

-- 
Mark Waddingham ~ mark at livecode.com ~ http://www.livecode.com/
LiveCode: Everyone can create apps