Ada and 32 bit Unicode character sets (still?) 64 bit addressing and OOP

[xanthian@well.com (Kent Paul Dolan)]

Hyman Rosen <hyrosen@mail.com> wrote:
> Kent Paul Dolan wrote:
>> "Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com> wrote:

>>> Probably. See AI-285. (http://www.ada-auth.org/ais.html).

>> ??? That link doesn't go to anything obviously pertinent,
>> just the top of some huge and not pellucidly navigable
>> database even whose component parts are confusingly
>> labeled.

>> Do you have a direct link or is what you reference really
>> on that page somewhere?

> This, maybe? It's AI-285, anyway.

> <http://www.ada-auth.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/AIs/AI-00285.TXT?rev=1.6>

Ah, thanks.  You may well think me mad (many do) but I read
the whole thing, comments and all.

One can of worms remains hidden in what I read:  if you
allow the writing of source code in "native" character sets,
you pretty much must as part of that grant the ability to
use "native" quoting characters, and among the world's
languages there are many of them.  It would seem necessary
to separate out of the "punctuation" classes those pieces of
punctuation that are specifically quoting characters.  This
also adds the complexity that many national quoting
characters have left and right handedness, while the
existing Ada quoting characters are ambidexterous.  Probably
quoting syntax that includes demand for correct quote
matches by handedness would best satisfy the "principle of
least astonishment" for source code writers in those nations
/ languages / character set subsets.

And as held by some but not all of the commenters, if you
standardize these quoting characters for some, you should
standardize them for all, or you end up with "Tower of
Babel"-brand Ada.  I can hardly wait to start using those
dressy lower small double angle brackets to quote strings in
source code; they look so _sophisticated_.

I'd appreciate it if someone would pass this comment along
to whomever is collecting comments for AI-285.

Having made many lives miserable for a short while again,
I'll try to refrain from further comments on the Ada
specific issues I'm reading, after all, in
comp.lang.java.advocacy.

xanthian, whose standards committee (X3H3, X3H33) years
included and enhanced being a nit-picking pedant.