Submitted via IRC for Bytram
Ligatures in programming fonts — a misguided trend I was hoping would collapse under its own illogic. But several readers have already sent me this new argument in favor.
Let me save you some time:
Ligatures in programming fonts are a terrible idea.
And not because I’m a purist or a grump. (Some days, but not today.) Programming code has special semantic considerations. Ligatures in programming fonts are likely to either misrepresent the meaning of the code, or cause miscues among readers. So in the end, even if they’re cute, the risk of error isn’t worth it.
There are good reasons we have Unicode and this is NOT one of them.
Source: http://tinyletter.com/mbutterick/letters/q-ligatures-in-programming-fonts-a-hell-no
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday July 24 2017, @06:29AM (4 children)
Okay, I'll take your post seriously. Interesting, but I don't see any advantage of elastic tabstops over HTML table cells.
It's a very bad idea to redefine an ASCII control character that is still commonly used. Leave CR, LF, and Tab alone. And for good measure don't mess with Null, Esc, or backspace either.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Monday July 24 2017, @10:30AM
Good Lord!!!
As if we weren't already having enough problems with alphabetic capital "O" looking a helluva lot like a numeric "0", and lower case alphabetic "l" looking like a numeric "1", we haven't had enough of this look-alike confusion?
The only thing this looks good to me for is to enable one to more easily write obfuscated code that looks like it does one thing and actually does another.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @02:30PM (2 children)
As if tab character had ever had a single agreed-upon definition.
(Score: 1) by Arik on Monday July 24 2017, @07:14PM
TAB - Advance to the next tab stop.
TABs had a single agreed-upon definition from the start, it was the implementation of the tab stop that, in retrospect, might have been more tightly specified.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 24 2017, @07:16PM
A tab character is like a dick, the size may vary but it's still a dick.