[Haskell-i18n] Unicode in source

[Alastair Reid]

Dylan Thurston writes:
> In fact, I'd recommend redoing the layout rule in a more robust way
> so that it will also work with, e.g., proportional fonts.  Requiring
> a new-line before a target column is set would work.

Just want to be clear about what you mean here.

I think you're saying that code like:

  case x of Left _ -> False
            Right _ -> True

should be disallowed (we should require a newline after 'of').

I hope you're not saying that we should count pixels occupied by
proporional fonts.  This would be a bad idea because different
machines might assign different widths to the same character.

> (I'd go further and require that the leading white-space always be
> identical, not just get you to the same column.  Tabs are not always
> equal to 8 spaces...)

Your suggestion reminds me very strongly of Makefiles.
Makefiles make a huge distinction between tabs and spaces.
My editor makes tabs and spaces look the same.
So does cat, less, lpr, enscript and every other tool I know.
The result is that when I write a bad Makefile I have a hell of a time 
debugging it because the code looks fine.  [I vaguely remember
similar problems if the last rule in your file doesn't end in a newline.]

Let's not even think about following Make's example here.

If we feel a need to fix this problem in Haskell, the best choice
seems to be to say that tabs are not allowed in Haskell.  That way,
everyone will use a preprocessor appropriate to their local
environment to generate legal Haskell code.

[This may just be the reaction of an emacs user.  Emacs largely takes
the view that tabs are a weak file compression technique.  When I hit
the TAB key, emacs figures out which column I want to be in (e.g.,
which may vary when editing Perl code, Linux kernel code, Hugs C code,
Haskell, etc.) and moves there.  If I want, emacs will use a tab
character to encode 8 spaces when saving to file or it will use space
characters.  As a result, I lean towards the belief that pressing the
TAB key will only generate a TAB in the file if my tabs are 8 spaces.
Obviously, not all editors can be configured to behave the same way.]

--
Alastair Reid                 alastair@reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk  
Reid Consulting (UK) Limited  http://www.reid-consulting-uk.ltd.uk/alastair/