Re: Re: (any documentation for) linear syntax?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg107602] Re: [mg107583] Re: (any documentation for) linear syntax?
- From: John Fultz <jfultz at wolfram.com>
- Date: Fri, 19 Feb 2010 03:34:26 -0500 (EST)
- Reply-to: jfultz at wolfram.com
On Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:16:32 -0500 (EST), Vince Virgilio wrote: > On Feb 17, 6:58 am, John Fultz <jfu... at wolfram.com> wrote: > > SNIP > >> >> This is all a bit unfortunate, because linear syntax can get extremely >> unwieldy, and it's particularly inside of strings where it becomes most >> unwieldy due to subtle issues with how the backslash escaping mechanism >> works within strings. While it's possible to create such forms by hand, >> we generally don't recommend it, and recommend instead using the various >> built-in ways of auto- converting when necessary (the documentation >> points to some of these). >> >> If it sounds like I'm not exactly thrilled about how we designed this >> aspect of the system, that's because I'm not. There are several gotchas >> I haven't fleshed out here, and with the hindsight that we now have, we >> could probably have done this better. Maybe we will someday. In the >> mean time, when you do have to interact with it, it's best to let the >> system work it out for you. In the case of Find/Replace, that tends to >> be pretty simple using the method I described in my first paragraph. >> >> Sincerely, >> >> John Fultz >> jfu... at wolfram.com >> User Interface Group >> Wolfram Research, Inc. >> > > What does WRI think of linear format based on Unicode, a la Murray > Sargent III (and Office 2007)? > > http://www.unicode.org/notes/tn28/ > > Vince Virgilio Not speaking for WRI, but just speaking for myself. I think I'd have to say my favorite linear format is still TeX. I wouldn't want to have to compose or read anything non-trivial in either Mathematica's or Word's linear format. And as a software developer, I wouldn't want to have to write either parsing or serialization code for either format (yes, I have actually had to do this for linear syntax in Mathematica...but it wasn't exactly fun!) . Computer representations of typesetting map very easily to structured data formats, such as Mathematica expressions and XML (or, more specifically, MathML). In general, that's why XML has been so popular among software developers. Highly structured data formats make it much less likely that confused and all-too-human software developers will introduce bugs, or QA will overlook those bugs, which will turn your Important Data Set into Unreadable Data Pudding. It's true that structured data formats can lose some considerable human readability. But TeX, linear syntax, and the Unicode technical note you point to also fall down very quickly for non-trivial expressions. On the other hand, some sort of linear format is going to be with us for a long time. Mathematica still has to support copying and pasting into, for example, plain text email. But I think as it evolves, it will evolve into something more structured where there aren't obvious, human-readable/Mathematica-interpretable linear representations. In fact, such an evolution has already been happening (while maintaining backward compatibility, of course). Sincerely, John Fultz jfultz at wolfram.com User Interface Group Wolfram Research, Inc.