Just Wondering

[Badger BA 64810]

In article <17552 at cup.portal.com> Tim_CDC_Roberts at cup.portal.com writes:
[..]
>so let's establish a new standard right now.  from this point forward, 
>the only allowable usage of capital letters shall be for EMPHASIS.  this 
>will permit emphasis to be rendered on devices which do not support 
>underlining.  once underlining is universally supporte on all media and
>all devices, we can eliminate capital letters altogether, and think of 
>something else to do with 26 entries in the ascii table (smiley faces?).
>                                 :-)
>Tim_CDC_Roberts at cup.portal.com                | Control Data...
>...!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!tim_cdc_roberts |   ...or it will control you.

In \TeX, it is considered more elegant to {\em emphasize} a concept with 
a contrast between {\rm roman} and {\it italic} fonts, rather than 
crudely \underline{underlining} something!  (In a manuscript, underlining 
is used to indicate that italics are desired.)

At the moment we are constrained by current character/terminal/printer/font
technology to define programming languages in a linear sequence of 
(probably ASCII) characters.  I'm not sure we're ready for the the coming
graphical/visual technology explosion.  

As regards the theme, ``Why case-sensitivity?''  
I _definitely_ prefer being able to use both upper and lower case, 
with a predominance of lowercase.  
I generally *don't* like it when an identifier is used in several different 
case treatments:  I read ``APart'' and ``apart'' differently, so in Ada, 
would always write that as ``a_part'' and ``apart''.  I wouldn't allow 
mere capitalization to serve as a word marker.  



Bernard A. Badger Jr.	407/984-6385          |``Use the Source, Luke!''
Secure Computer Products                      |``Get a LIFE!''  -- J.H. Conway
Harris GISD, Melbourne, FL  32902             |Buddy, can you paradigm?
Internet: bbadger%x102c at trantor.harris-atd.com|'s/./&&/g' Tom sed expansively.