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dwgtoday at 1:53 AM1 replyview on HN

@apt-apt-apt-apt pointed out in a separate comment that: >A simple translation of keywords seems straightforward, I wonder why it's not standard.

I replied that for Japanese at least, probably due to symbol input being too tedious. However I think it's worth mentioning a potential mitigation, and maybe even an advantage.

As a mitigation, full-width symbols could be used instead, which are typically the default in Japanese input. Japanese itself is also fixed-width so if done across the board the language itself becomes fixed-width, not just by virtue of a font selection.

As an advantage, some logical symbols, greek letters, other rare characters are easy to input in Japanese mode, and this could lend itself to a more symbol-heavy language design. I already take advantage of this myself with Δ, φ, and τ use selectively in a few projects. Symbols with easy entry may differ by OS, but here are a few other examples that could be useful:

≠, ≡, ∞, ∴, λ, θ, α, β, ・, °, ※


Replies

numpad0today at 3:41 AM

Japanese input system do allow use of arbitrary UTF-8 symbols, but you have to type out the "pronunciation" for symbols, e.g. "nottoiko-ru" for ≠, "goudou" for ≡, "yueni" for ∴, "ramuda" for λ, etc. Just using "!=" is faster.

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