Re: Ada generics

["Randy Brukardt" <randy@rrsoftware.com>]

"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message
news:136rh3gzy2wpd.agw4naavc1ge$.dlg@40tude.net...
...
> > This is more complicated than the English-only definition, but it was
> > thought to be mandatory to get approval of a new standard. (This sort of
> > internationalization is being required of all languages: C++ has a
number of
> > proposals on the table for handling this as well.) It's also a
ramification
> > of case insensitivity - the only alternative would be to completely
abandon
> > it, and that would be very bad for compatibility with Ada 95.
>
> I don't see why letters of identifiers must be all Unicode letters. I
> wouldn't allow anything but Latin. In any case it just cannot be
> open-ended.

Because higher ups at ISO/IEC has said that such things need to be allowed.
If you want an ISO/IEC standard, you have to be responsive to their wishes.
Personally, I think anything beyond 8-bit characters is going too far (even
for strings): if it's not worth doing in English, its not worth doing! [For
me, the universe revolves around Madison, WI and everyone should speak
(American) English (dropping all of those other archaic languages) so that
everyone can communicate without unnecessary barriers. This is very similar
to my stand on Ada vs. other programming languages. But I'm not particularly
surprised when someone disagrees with any of those positions... ;-)]

And it's not "open-ended". It follows a published standard (Unicode), just
like the earlier versions of Ada followed other published standards (ISO/IEC
10646 in the case of Ada 95).

In any case, Unicode identifiers are part of the Ada Amendment. And I would
be very surprised if we went backwards on that; such a change would be very
incompatible. (I personally don't believe that many programs will use
Unicode identifiers, but it's likely to be non-zero, maybe 5%.)

                                          Randy.