Re: [Axiom-developer] RE: Emacs + input syntax

[root]

>Can either of you give any objective argument about why
>you prefer to write in a serialized one-dimensional manner,
>encoding nested structures with the bracket (or even a
>parenthesis) notation, instead of using the natural two
>dimensional nature of the display media to express this
>structure more succinctly?

yep. i can't count what i can't see. i can balance parens
over thousands of lines but i can't balance spaces. parens
give proper nesting no matter how i mangle the source. 
spaces don't. try carefully balancing spaces over 5 pages 
of code (e.g. large nested conditional statements). one
missing space and the meaning of the program SILENTLY changes.

my "hack" for doing this is to globally replace spaces following
a newline by a period and count periods. then, before compiling
the program, replace them by spaces.

oh, and you can easily screw the whole world over with an
editor that likes to replace spaces by tabs. no end of puzzlement
and grief follows.

> If not, my label of "linguist prejudice" must surely apply.

prejudice is pre-judging a decision.
experience is post-judging a decision.
the decision to pile is flawed.
based on experience.

t