One of the things I took away from trying Julia was that unicode is incredibly dumb in some aspects. Unicode lacks support for parts of the latin alphabet in subscript and superscript formatting(similar for the greek alphabet)[0].
As Julia relies on Unicode for its neatly formatted variable names this is an annoying limitation that the developers can't even do much about.
Unicode has over 100k symbols, including about 3500 emoji. But a continuous set of 26 small letters, either in lowercase or uppercase(or both) is too much bloat apparently.
I don't mind Julia's Unicode support, but definitely share the gripe about how the Unicode standard doesn't yet support a complete a-z set of sub/superscripts!
Which is why I am so disappointed about those gaps in Unicode. Apparently the Unicode consortium doesn't care because in their eyes such things have to be handled by higher level formatting software, but that's not a very convincing excuse imho.
It's just so bewildering when on one hand lowercase superscript is missing exactly one letter for the full coverage, and at the same time Unicode has characters like "Grinning cat face with smiling eyes"(U+1F638). Just what I needed.
It's a bit disappointing because together with the integration in the REPL this feature in Julia works well enough to give a glimpse of the potential but when trying to experiment more it shows gaps that make it a bit of a trial-and-error situation. Better direct support in standardized encodings could make this much more usable and maybe not just in one specific language.
IMO, the solution here from unicode's end seems really clear. Just add superscript and subscript modifiers (the same way emoji have skin-tone and gender modifiers). That way, you don't need to add special ones for every character people want different versions of.
How about a single "superscript" and "subscript" modifier that handles any of the other Unicode symbols?
The standard already has enough formatting options to make smartphones crash by sending them a text message(as could be seen multiple times on both Android and iOS).
If you think the unicode committee made the right call, please explain why the decision to add smiling cat pictures and over 10 heart symbols was correct but not supporting everyday maths notation.
Comments
One of the things I took away from trying Julia was that unicode is incredibly dumb in some aspects. Unicode lacks support for parts of the latin alphabet in subscript and superscript formatting(similar for the greek alphabet)[0].
As Julia relies on Unicode for its neatly formatted variable names this is an annoying limitation that the developers can't even do much about.
Unicode has over 100k symbols, including about 3500 emoji. But a continuous set of 26 small letters, either in lowercase or uppercase(or both) is too much bloat apparently.
[0]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/17908593/how-to-find-the...
Julia core developers are at the forefront of trying to push for a better unicode standard:
https://github.com/stevengj/subsuper-proposal
I don't mind Julia's Unicode support, but definitely share the gripe about how the Unicode standard doesn't yet support a complete a-z set of sub/superscripts!
What's the alternative? If you want julia files to be editable by regular programs, I can't think what else you would use.
Which is why I am so disappointed about those gaps in Unicode. Apparently the Unicode consortium doesn't care because in their eyes such things have to be handled by higher level formatting software, but that's not a very convincing excuse imho.
It's just so bewildering when on one hand lowercase superscript is missing exactly one letter for the full coverage, and at the same time Unicode has characters like "Grinning cat face with smiling eyes"(U+1F638). Just what I needed.
It's a bit disappointing because together with the integration in the REPL this feature in Julia works well enough to give a glimpse of the potential but when trying to experiment more it shows gaps that make it a bit of a trial-and-error situation. Better direct support in standardized encodings could make this much more usable and maybe not just in one specific language.
IMO, the solution here from unicode's end seems really clear. Just add superscript and subscript modifiers (the same way emoji have skin-tone and gender modifiers). That way, you don't need to add special ones for every character people want different versions of.
How about super and sub scripts for thr 35000 or some Chinese character? I think thr unicode committee made the right call
How about a single "superscript" and "subscript" modifier that handles any of the other Unicode symbols?
The standard already has enough formatting options to make smartphones crash by sending them a text message(as could be seen multiple times on both Android and iOS).
If you think the unicode committee made the right call, please explain why the decision to add smiling cat pictures and over 10 heart symbols was correct but not supporting everyday maths notation.
Julia doesn’t rely on any Unicode. It just gives you the option to use it. If it’s not useful to you, feel free to not use it.
How would one not use Unicode? Every character on my keyboard and screen are Unicode characters.
Most of them are ascii as well.