Comment on SRFI-110 and Comparison to Genyris xyzzy Bill Birch (22 May 2013 15:03 UTC)
Re: Comment on SRFI-110 and Comparison to Genyris xyzzy David A. Wheeler (23 May 2013 13:39 UTC)
sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (23 May 2013 16:08 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (23 May 2013 16:19 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (23 May 2013 16:32 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (24 May 2013 03:55 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (24 May 2013 03:12 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (24 May 2013 15:34 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (24 May 2013 20:02 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (24 May 2013 20:09 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (24 May 2013 21:35 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (24 May 2013 22:40 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (24 May 2013 23:13 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (25 May 2013 03:43 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (25 May 2013 03:20 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (25 May 2013 04:17 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (25 May 2013 04:27 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (25 May 2013 04:55 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (25 May 2013 18:14 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (26 May 2013 23:26 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 00:29 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone (27 May 2013 15:51 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Alan Manuel Gloria (28 May 2013 04:28 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (28 May 2013 18:34 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Beni Cherniavsky-Paskin (26 May 2013 20:40 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (26 May 2013 22:43 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 00:00 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Alexey Radul (27 May 2013 03:32 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 04:44 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Alexey Radul (27 May 2013 05:50 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Alan Manuel Gloria (27 May 2013 06:34 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 15:14 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 13:55 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Alexey Radul (27 May 2013 16:27 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (27 May 2013 15:55 UTC)
RE: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic Jos Koot (27 May 2013 04:57 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic David A. Wheeler (27 May 2013 13:37 UTC)
Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John Cowan (27 May 2013 15:50 UTC)

Re: sweet-expressions are not homoiconic John David Stone 23 May 2013 16:32 UTC

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        John Cowan writes:

 > John David Stone scripsit:
 >
 > > From the beginning, there was an obvious impediment to the use of
 > > sweet-expressions:  Readers who are accustomed to alphabetic writing
 > > systems in which whitespace is almost invariably used as a word
 > > separator, a paragraph separator, a decorative typographical element,
 > > or for page layout simply don't respond psychologically to whitespace
 > > characters as they do to visible characters such as parentheses.
 >
 > Ifthatwerereallytruewedstillallbewritinginscriptiocontin
 > ualikethiswherelinesarebrokenanywhereatall.

        Well, it did take a considerable time (measured in generations) for
the use of whitespace as a word separator to become standard.  But there
was an obvious motivating advantage in that case: separated-word texts are
significantly less ambiguous.  No such advantage accrues to
sweet-expressions.

 > > Whitespace characters don't look like grouping symbols, as
 > > parentheses, brackets, braces, or oriented quotation marks do, because
 > > they don't have appropriate shapes and don't come in pairs.  Moreover,
 > > they don't visibly nest, so it is unnatural to use them to represent
 > > recursively defined syntactic structures.
 >
 > Au contraire.  It is so natural than even suits use nested indentation
 > to show hierarchy in their PowerPoints.

        Yes, and we see how well that works out when the hierarchies are as
deeply nested as those in LISP-like languages are.

        The other common case of the use of indentation to indicate
grouping is legislative bills, which I would hesitate to cite as exemplars
of readability and homoiconicity.

        It's not a persuasive argument to say that Scheme programs could be
made just as readable as Congressional legislation and the wordier kinds of
PowerPoint slides.

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