Re: display _ as left arrow (was Re: Help on sending a UDP Packet)

[address@hidden]

I suspect Cuis is also using the Unicode characters.  I don't know.

But the idea of GNU Smalltalk is totally different, it seems GNU Smalltalk,
is about emacs, UNIX integration, command line etc. while Cuis is much more 
graphically oriented (I think).

In any case the smalltalk-mode could be enhanced:

> (defvar smalltalk-prettify-symbols-alist
>  '(("^" . ?↑)
>    (":=" . ?←)))

this could be extended to include a line

>    ("_" . ?←)))

so that the underscore is also pretty-printed as the back arrow.

Is there any interest in updating the smalltalk-mode in the GNU smalltalk 
package to do that ?

David Stes

----- Op 11 jan 2021 om 16:21 schreef help-smalltalk help-smalltalk@gnu.org:

> stes@PANDORA.BE writes:
> 
>> If I understand the footnote in the GNU Smalltalk syntax on := and _ 
>> correctly,
>> no Unicode is required anyway:
>>
>> The GNU smalltalk manual says:
>> " In the ancient days (like the middle 70’s), the ASCII underscore character 
>> was
>> also printed as a back-arrow, and many terminals would display it that way,
>> thus its current usage. "
>>
>> So it would be sufficient to find a font that displays _ as back-arrow,
>> which according to the above would exist for simple ASCII -- without Unicode
>> extensions.
>>
>> There are footnotes in the wikipedia page on ASCII
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#cite_note-Haynes_2015-60
>>
>> that up arrow and left arrow were in use.
>>
>> It says:
>> "By 1967 the underscore had spread to ASCII,[5] replacing the 
>> similarly-shaped
>> left-arrow character"
> With the newer smalltalk-mode from elpa, and if you enable
> prettify-symbols-mode in emacs, you will get the prettified unicode
> symbols. Currently there are only two that are defined:
> 
> (defvar smalltalk-prettify-symbols-alist
>  '(("^" . ?↑)
>    (":=" . ?←)))
> 
> Please note you cannot use the fancy symbols in source code though;
> it is only emacs tricking your eyes at display.
> 
> Derek