Unicode block for programming related symbols and codepoints?

Pierpaolo Bernardi olopierpa at gmail.com
Sun Feb 8 15:32:03 CST 2015


On Sun, Feb 8, 2015 at 9:15 PM, Alfred Zett <alfred_z at web.de> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> is there such a unicode block for programming related codepoints?
>
> Conventional search engines as well as wolfram alpha can't answer that, with
> the former one leading to all the programming problems that occur...
>
> If such a block doesn't exist, I'd like to make a proposal - if possible -
> to add one with at least the following codepoints/characters:

Once upon a time I would have said that this is out of scope for
Unicode. But now anything goes, so who knows.

> - Indentation codepoint, with no fixed defined graphical representation. For
> indentation based programming languages.
> Because:
> -- specific clients may want to show it different (for example as arrows,
> lines etc., using another color):
> --- browsers could let the web page creator let decide the visual
> representation (character and size) via CSS
> --- the same with editors, independent from the actual font
> --- in case of visual impairment, the user could even change the accoustical
> representation if the editor allows it
> -- unlike a space symbol, it wouldn't need more than one character per
> indentation
> -- unlike tabs or space, it wouldn't be whitespace
> -- unlike normal arrow characters, one could customize the length in an
> editor and wouldn't have to insert extra spaces for a better visual imagery

a Tab is exactly what you described.

> - A codepoint for string literal quotes, that would spare one the escaping.

How would this work exactly?

> - A statement separator symbol.

What's wrong with ; , . : #  % ^ & and other hundreds of punctuation symbols?

Cheers
P.


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