[Cuis-dev] Making Cuis Unicode-only and VectorGraphics-only. (was Re: Alternative arrows)

[Luciano Notarfrancesco]

Hi Juan,
I like the idea to make everything Unicode and get rid of old code!

About removing support for $^ and $_ I’m not so sure… depends how we do it.
The first question that comes to my mind is how are we going to input other
arrows for assignment and for return. The LaTeX commands like \oplus are
very convenient for my math stuff, but seem too much typing for something
that we can do with one keystroke (two keys actually with SHIFT). Also, I
see that removing support for assignment with $_ has the benefit of making
available that character for something else, but removing support for $^
doesn’t seem to bring any benefits (since we can already use it as binary
selector).

Probably you gave more thought to this, and I’d like to know. In the
meantime I throw this idea: get rid of $_, in the actual source and changes
files use ‘:=‘ and $^, and make the syntax highlighter show assignment and
return as any Unicode that the user chooses (with some arrows as default).
Does this make sense? I’m not sure how this would work when you save a
method that was syntax highlighter, do we need to convert back the Unicode
arrows to ‘:=‘ and $^ ? It we never insert real Unicode arrows in the text
and just display them with the arrow glyphs, like we do with useST80Glyphs?


On Wed, 19 Oct 2022 at 02:02 Juan Vuletich via Cuis-dev <
cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st> wrote:

> Hi Luciano,
>
> I also think it would be good to make this configurable. It is also bad
> that I hardcoded this in the plugin, making it harder to change.
>
> Still, this opens a different discussion. Something I have been thinking
> about, but hadn't talked about in the list.
>
> Now that the VectorEnginePlugin is in the official VMs, it means we can
> count on it. So, what I want to do is to make the "Use Unicode" preference
> the default and only behavior, and actually remove support for ISO 8859
> files (and StrikeFonts, and a lot of the older stuff). And if everything is
> Unicode, then there's no need to have these special glyphs for $_ and $^.
> We could use instead a real Unicode left arrow for assignment, and just
> remove support for $_ for assignment. (Using := would still be possible).
> All this "Smalltalk-80 glyphs" kludge would go away.
>
> What do you think?
>
> If we decide to go in this direction, it may make sense to temporarily
> disable the "Smalltalk-80 glyphs", at least if you want to use the Unicode
> arrows for something else.
>
> Opinions?
>
> On 10/17/2022 6:20 AM, Luciano Notarfrancesco via Cuis-dev wrote:
>
> Perhaps instead of the useST80Glyphs boolean in Tahoe displayUtf32: method
> we could pass a translation table, a WordArray with pairs of code points to
> replace when displaying. Juan, what do you think?
>
> On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 at 13:06 Luciano Notarfrancesco <luchiano at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I changed those methods but still couldn’t get it to work. Now I see this
>> is hardcoded in the VectorEngine plugin. Juan, could we make this
>> configurable?
>>
>> On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 at 04:23 Gerald Klix <cuis.01 at klix.ch> wrote:
>>
>>> On 16.10.22 22:54, Luciano Notarfrancesco wrote:
>>> > I don’t mean to change the current behavior. I just would like that the
>>> > user could easily choose the code points of the glyphs to be used for
>>> those
>>> > characters. Right now they are hardcoded in TTFFontReader and
>>> VectorEngine.
>>> > As a preference they would be more flexible, but I can just change
>>> those
>>> > methods in my image for now. I’m using all DejaVu Sans and the thick
>>> arrows
>>> > look nice.
>>> Yes, that was my initial impression; I even started
>>> to write an encouraging E-mail.
>>> Then I tried some other fonts and discovered that the fonts
>>> mentioned below do not have the necessary glyphs.
>>>
>>> Perhaps a dictionary that maps the font-name to code-point
>>> substitution mapping, would be a general solution.
>>> Actually we also have to look at the syntactic context ...
>>>
>>> Anyway, I like the thicker arrows that DejaVu provides
>>> and I am willing to help to find a solution.
>>> >
>>> > On Mon, 17 Oct 2022 at 03:38 Gerald Klix <cuis.01 at klix.ch> wrote:
>>> >
>>> >> Luciano,
>>> >>
>>> >> I see your problem,
>>> >> but these Characters only have glyphs in the
>>> >> DejaVu, JetBrainsMono, KiwiMaru and KurintoSans fonts.
>>> >>
>>> >> To make this work properly, we need some means
>>> >> to discover the aforementioned situation
>>> >> and switch back to the current behavior.
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> Sorry and HTH,
>>> >>
>>> >> Gerald
>>> >>
>>> >>
>>> >> On 06.10.22 12:55, Luciano Notarfrancesco via Cuis-dev wrote:
>>> >>> What do you think about adding two preferences to set the unicode
>>> >>> characters to be used for displaying ^ and _? The problem I’m having
>>> is
>>> >>> that the arrows that we currently use are the same that are commonly
>>> used
>>> >>> in mathematics for morphisms, and the code gets a bit confusing in my
>>> >>> system, so I’d like to use the thick arrow 16r2B05 for _ and 16r2B06
>>> for
>>> >> ^,
>>> >>> and to avoid annoying people who like the current arrows I think we
>>> could
>>> >>> make this a preference. Is this reasonable?
>>> >>>
>>> >>>
>>> >>
>>> >
>>>
>>>
>
> --
> Juan Vuletichcuis.stgithub.com/jvuletichresearchgate.net/profile/Juan-Vuletichindependent.academia.edu/JuanVuletichpatents.justia.com/inventor/juan-manuel-vuletichlinkedin.com/in/juan-vuletich-75611b3twitter.com/JuanVuletich
>
> --
> Cuis-dev mailing list
> Cuis-dev at lists.cuis.st
> https://lists.cuis.st/mailman/listinfo/cuis-dev
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.cuis.st/mailman/archives/cuis-dev/attachments/20221019/4fe904e0/attachment.htm>