Re: [Bug-apl] Request for enhancement

[Kacper Gutowski]

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Juergen Sauermann
<address@hidden> wrote:
> GNU APL supports the entire Unicode character set to the extent that your
> platform supports (= is able to display) it.

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 5:59 PM, Fred Weigel <address@hidden> wrote:
> The current definition of letter includes (...)
> 0.3(overbar) could be expanded to 0.33.. (as many as needed to fill
> the precision).

If I understand correctly, the request was about changes in syntax,
not just about being able to use these characters in code in character
literals or to manipulate them.

> Overline E2 80 BE (UTF-8), complementary to _ (underline)

I would like to note that symbol ‘complementary to’ _ underline, in
APL world is the high minus which is rendered using ¯ (U+00AF macron).
That's why it's allowed in names.  There is no specific high minus
character in Unicode, nor I see any reason to believe that U+203E
overline would be a better fit for it.  But perhaps there is some
merit in adding it as acceptable alternative just like ∊ (U+220A) and
∈ (U+2208) which are both accepted by GNU APL for epsilon.

Supporting underlined alphabetic characters in names by allowing
combining low line in them would be interesting.  Unicode has no other
way to represent them, and lower-case Latin characters are not the
same after all.  But I'm not sure whether it's a good idea.

As for 0.3̅, it's faster to write ÷3 and in most fonts I know it's
also much more readable.

-k