Re: [whatwg] Unicode -> ASCII copy/paste fallback

On Sun, Feb 15, 2015 at 3:16 AM, Glenn Maynard <glenn@zewt.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2015 at 12:34 PM, David Sheets <kosmo.zb@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I am writing a documentation generation tool for a programming
>> language with right arrows represented as -> but would like to render
>> them as →. Programmers are used to writing in ASCII and reading
>> typeset mathematics. If I present documentation to them via a
>> purpose-built document browser, I should give them the option (at the
>> generation/styling stage) of making those documents as pleasing as
>> possible.
>
>
> Programmers a decade or two ago, maybe, but not today.
>
> As a programmer, if I see "→" on a page, select it and copy it, I expect to
> copy "→", just as I selected.  This sounds like something browsers should
> actively discourage.

If you're reading documentation which includes types, it's nice to see
implication arrows but copy valid syntax.

Programming communities which use types or other formal methods
commonly typeset their own documents with mathematical notation. For
practical reasons, they define their language representations using
ASCII.

If you have nothing more useful to discuss beyond uninformed,
opinionated naysaying, I'll be leaving this thread lie.

> --
> Glenn Maynard
>

Received on Sunday, 15 February 2015 10:41:12 UTC