On Jan 25, 2008 8:13 AM, Jameson Chema Quinn <jquinn@cs.oberlin.edu> wrote:
I'm writing a source code editor that translates identifiers and keywords on-screen into a different natural language. This tool will do no transformations except at the reversible word level. There is one simple, avoidable case where this results in nonsense in many languages: "is not". I propose allowing "not is" as an acceptable alternative to "is not".
Obviously English syntax has a deep influence on python syntax, and I would never propose deeper syntactical changes for natural-language-compatibility. This is a trivial change, one that is still easily parseable by an English-native mind (and IMO actually makes more sense logically, since it does not invite confusion with the nonsensical "is (not ...)"). The use-cases where you have to grep for "is not" are few, and the "(is not)|(not is)" pattern that would replace it is still pretty simple.
Sorry, but this use case just doesn't sound strong enough to change a programming language's grammar. While I promise you I will remain -1 on the proposal simply because it doesn't serve any programmer's goals, you've piqued my curiosity -- can you give an example of what your tool does? From your description I actually have no clue. -- --Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)