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

[Juan Vuletich]

Hi Luciano,

To be able to use arrows for math, and have a reasonable display, today 
you can do:
`(Preferences instanceAt: #syntaxHighlightingAsYouTypeAnsiAssignment) 
value: true.`
Note that when Shout does this kind if thing, it actually modifies the 
code. It is not just the display. So, if you save code, the assignments 
using ':=' will get saved.

(inline)

On 10/19/2022 2:23 AM, Luciano Notarfrancesco via Cuis-dev wrote:
> 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.

Not really. I just want to remove StrikeFonts, "st-80 glyphs" and make 
good use of Unicode.

> 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?

Yes it does.

> 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 $^ ?

Yes. We'd need to change them back. Doesn't look like a big problem.

> It we never insert real Unicode arrows in the text and just display 
> them with the arrow glyphs, like we do with useST80Glyphs?

Shout modifies the code read from sources/changes before passing it to 
the text editor. Then the user modifies this "shouted" text. Nowhere we 
have the original, non shouted text, with the changes done by the user. 
So we need to convert back. I still think this is better than hacking 
the text display as we do with ST80Glyphs.

WRT $^, I think it is of secondary importance. We can just use the caret 
for return, I think.

And yes, this could open the door to '<=', etc just like Fira Code with 
ligatures. It could behave exactly like that. We'd need to use shout for 
ASCII->Unicode and do the conversion back to ASCII for save. Files are 
plain ASCII, Smalltalk tools look fancy.

Thanks,

-- 
Juan Vuletich
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