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  1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Sunday, 21-Apr-2019 04:19:21 EDT Don Romano (alt) Don Romano (alt)

    I get why programming languages stick to plain text files, but I kind of wish there were more options. I want to insert mathematical expressions and have them look like they do in a math book. There is LaTeX but a C compiler can't parse that, and it's not very WYSIWYG.

    What I'd ideally want is to have the whole stack (keyboards, editors, source code files, compilers) be adapted for it.

    Also, variable names with greek letters and subscripts would be helpful.

    In conversation Sunday, 21-Apr-2019 04:19:21 EDT from noagendasocial.com permalink
    1. Don Romano (alt) (thor@noagendasocial.com)'s status on Sunday, 21-Apr-2019 04:24:59 EDT Don Romano (alt) Don Romano (alt)
      in reply to

      As far as I can tell, the only reason we are stuck with clumsy notation for math in code is because we once used teletypes to write and run code, and they couldn't display formatted text.

      I feel that computers should get better at handling text that isn't a simple string of characters in general.

      Wouldn't it be cool if editors just worked directly on abstract syntax trees instead of text files? No more arguments over formatting; just reconfigure your editor.

      In conversation Sunday, 21-Apr-2019 04:24:59 EDT from noagendasocial.com permalink
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