A 'Python like' language

[David MacQuigg]

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004 07:58:44 -0600, Skip Montanaro <skip at pobox.com>
wrote:

>Thanks to Microsoft, attachments frequently don't pass through mail servers
>these days.  I know I filter all attachments out of a couple small mailing
>lists I manage.

I've never had this problem.  Is this something MS exchange does?

>At any rate, I agree with John that the Prothon folks got this particular
>bit dead wrong.  If they wanted to avoid tab/space problems they should have
>required that all indentation use only spaces, not only tabs.

The advantage of tabs ( a small one in my opinion ) is that the reader
can adjust the actual spacing to his preference.  Another advantage is
that you can add leading spaces for purely cosmetic reasons (lining up
columns in a continuation line ).  The tabs control the syntax.

x = 1.23 + 2.34 + 3.45 + 4.56 + \
    5.23 + 6.34 + 7.44 + 8.56      # Which number is slightly off ?

The solution I believe, is to have a special 'publishing' mode where
tabs are replaced by the character sequence '.   ' with however many
spaces the sender wants.  The dots actually make large, deeply-nested
blocks easier to read.

Of course, we will need a matching import mode, converting the
dot-space sequences back to tabs.

-- Dave