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Let's send patches to text editors so they render fancy ASCII characters? I also find it amusing that "fancy ASCII characters" is even a statement that can make

Let's send patches to text editors so they render fancy ASCII characters? I also find it amusing that "fancy ASCII characters" is even a statement that can make sense, there's only 127 ASCII characters!

pavel_lishin 9y ago
This might solve the "readable" part of the problem, but not the "writable" part of the problem.
- EGreg 9y ago
  Explain to me why humans have to be the ones to write proper syntax and escaping, instead of their editors. Do you do this for other formats, like RTF? What is this obsession with hand-coding complicated formats :)
  - pavel_lishin 9y ago
    > Do you do this for other formats, like RTF? No, but I do it for formats like HTML, CSS, JSON. My editor can assist me, but I don't need it. To a lesser degree, the same is true of Java, though I do admit to leaning much more heavily on my IDE for that. > What is this obsession with hand-coding complicated formats :) Well, part of it is that they're not all that complicated unless you're doing something fancy. Another part is almost certainly our (we as in developers) pride in being able to use nothing but vi installed on a decade-old operating system to get things done.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      Why? What benefit do you get from coding it by hand? The only one I can think of is being able to type some esoteric incantations in a textbox. Downsides include: XSS and malicious injection - users should be using markdown or provided an actual contentEditable HTML editor instead of a textarea. Like in GMail. Syntax errors. How many times have you typed some JSON by hand and realized you forgot to balance some braces or add a comma, or remove a comma at the end of an object? Complexity not that complicated, really? Basic C, HTML, CSS is not complicated. Advanced stuff is complicated. Forgetting a brace or a semicolon torpedoes the whole document. SQL is not complicated. Does that mean you want to write SQL by hand for production code? Why don't you install a simple extension to vi like an html format adapter? I'm a developer too. But let me tell you what it sounds like when you say you want to use nothing but vi: that's like saying you want to be able to build robots using nothing but a hammer and some nails, and nothing else can be built that requires further abstraction or advancement where you can't do the same with a hammer. And also keep in mind that not everyone is a developer. The fact that you like to keep esoteric syntax rules in your head for HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, C++ and so on doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to. When it comes to CSV, it's not even a real standard. You have to keep in your head all the cross platform quirks, like \r\n garbage similar to how web developers need to keep in their head all te Browser quirks and workarounds. All this... for some pride thing of being able to write text based stuff by hand. I brought up RTF for a reason. No sane person should want to type .rtf or .docx by hand. So why HTML?
  - Dylan16807 9y ago
    If you're calling CSV complicated, I really want to see your example of a simple format.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      CSV is complicated in the same way the DOM and Javascript is complicated: 1) there are so many differences between browsers that you have to keep them all in mind when asking people to send you csv files, or generating them, etc. Such as for example \n vs \r vs \r\n and escaping them. 2) You have to keep in your head escape rules and exceptions, and balancing quotes and other delimiters. 3) The whole thing doesn't look human readable or easily navigable for a document of any serious complexity. And what's the upside? If more people just used Excel or another spreadsheet program to edit these files, you won't face ANY of these issues. They would eventually converge on a standard format, like they did with HTML. Disclaimer: I wrote a CSV parser
      - Dylan16807 9y ago
        > there are so many differences between browsers that you have to keep them all in mind Compatibility horrors from people violating the standard will appear no matter what format you use. That's not fair to blame on the format. > You have to keep in your head escape rules and exceptions, and balancing quotes and other delimiters. CSV itself has newlines, commas, and quotations marks for special characters. That's extremely minimal. The only extra thing to keep in your head is "is this field quoted or not". What set of escapes and delimiters could be simpler? Would you rather reserve certain characters, and abandon the idea of holding "just text" values? > The whole thing doesn't look human readable or easily navigable for a document of any serious complexity. > And what's the upside? If more people just used Excel or another spreadsheet program to edit these files, you won't face ANY of these issues. They would eventually converge on a standard format, like they did with HTML. This sounds like you're arguing for a more complex format! I'm confused. So again, what is a format that you call simple?
        EGreg 9y ago
        I am not arguing for another format. I am arguing for using a program to edit these files, to avoid syntax errors and other crap that arises when people do manual stuff that doesn't need to be done manually. And sure the format can stand to be slightly more complex, who cares if you're not editing it by hand. Ascii text format is simple. Anything where you have arbitrarily complex structure, why not use a program to edit it? What is the downside of using the right tool for the job? Your text editor is a program. Why tunnel through text and manually edit stuff?
burntsushi 9y ago
Sure. Send patches. Until it becomes easy to read and write fancy ASCII characters in text editors, my criticism stands. I predict this will never happen under the principle of "good enough to use, bad enough to complain on HN." My point is that people keep suggesting ASCII delimiters as if it's some obvious solution that solves the entire problem, but it doesn't. People should instead be suggesting that text editors better support ASCII delimiters so that we can use them roughly as easily as we use commas today.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

This might solve the "readable" part of the problem, but not the "writable" part of the problem.

EGreg 9y ago
Explain to me why humans have to be the ones to write proper syntax and escaping, instead of their editors. Do you do this for other formats, like RTF? What is this obsession with hand-coding complicated formats :)
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  > Do you do this for other formats, like RTF? No, but I do it for formats like HTML, CSS, JSON. My editor can assist me, but I don't need it. To a lesser degree, the same is true of Java, though I do admit to leaning much more heavily on my IDE for that. > What is this obsession with hand-coding complicated formats :) Well, part of it is that they're not all that complicated unless you're doing something fancy. Another part is almost certainly our (we as in developers) pride in being able to use nothing but vi installed on a decade-old operating system to get things done.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Why? What benefit do you get from coding it by hand? The only one I can think of is being able to type some esoteric incantations in a textbox. Downsides include: XSS and malicious injection - users should be using markdown or provided an actual contentEditable HTML editor instead of a textarea. Like in GMail. Syntax errors. How many times have you typed some JSON by hand and realized you forgot to balance some braces or add a comma, or remove a comma at the end of an object? Complexity not that complicated, really? Basic C, HTML, CSS is not complicated. Advanced stuff is complicated. Forgetting a brace or a semicolon torpedoes the whole document. SQL is not complicated. Does that mean you want to write SQL by hand for production code? Why don't you install a simple extension to vi like an html format adapter? I'm a developer too. But let me tell you what it sounds like when you say you want to use nothing but vi: that's like saying you want to be able to build robots using nothing but a hammer and some nails, and nothing else can be built that requires further abstraction or advancement where you can't do the same with a hammer. And also keep in mind that not everyone is a developer. The fact that you like to keep esoteric syntax rules in your head for HTML, XML, CSS, Javascript, C++ and so on doesn't mean EVERYONE should have to. When it comes to CSV, it's not even a real standard. You have to keep in your head all the cross platform quirks, like \r\n garbage similar to how web developers need to keep in their head all te Browser quirks and workarounds. All this... for some pride thing of being able to write text based stuff by hand. I brought up RTF for a reason. No sane person should want to type .rtf or .docx by hand. So why HTML?
- Dylan16807 9y ago
  If you're calling CSV complicated, I really want to see your example of a simple format.
  - EGreg 9y ago
    CSV is complicated in the same way the DOM and Javascript is complicated: 1) there are so many differences between browsers that you have to keep them all in mind when asking people to send you csv files, or generating them, etc. Such as for example \n vs \r vs \r\n and escaping them. 2) You have to keep in your head escape rules and exceptions, and balancing quotes and other delimiters. 3) The whole thing doesn't look human readable or easily navigable for a document of any serious complexity. And what's the upside? If more people just used Excel or another spreadsheet program to edit these files, you won't face ANY of these issues. They would eventually converge on a standard format, like they did with HTML. Disclaimer: I wrote a CSV parser
    - Dylan16807 9y ago
      > there are so many differences between browsers that you have to keep them all in mind Compatibility horrors from people violating the standard will appear no matter what format you use. That's not fair to blame on the format. > You have to keep in your head escape rules and exceptions, and balancing quotes and other delimiters. CSV itself has newlines, commas, and quotations marks for special characters. That's extremely minimal. The only extra thing to keep in your head is "is this field quoted or not". What set of escapes and delimiters could be simpler? Would you rather reserve certain characters, and abandon the idea of holding "just text" values? > The whole thing doesn't look human readable or easily navigable for a document of any serious complexity. > And what's the upside? If more people just used Excel or another spreadsheet program to edit these files, you won't face ANY of these issues. They would eventually converge on a standard format, like they did with HTML. This sounds like you're arguing for a more complex format! I'm confused. So again, what is a format that you call simple?
      - EGreg 9y ago
        I am not arguing for another format. I am arguing for using a program to edit these files, to avoid syntax errors and other crap that arises when people do manual stuff that doesn't need to be done manually. And sure the format can stand to be slightly more complex, who cares if you're not editing it by hand. Ascii text format is simple. Anything where you have arbitrarily complex structure, why not use a program to edit it? What is the downside of using the right tool for the job? Your text editor is a program. Why tunnel through text and manually edit stuff?

burntsushi 9y ago

Sure. Send patches. Until it becomes easy to read and write fancy ASCII characters in text editors, my criticism stands. I predict this will never happen under the principle of "good enough to use, bad enough to complain on HN." My point is that people keep suggesting ASCII delimiters as if it's some obvious solution that solves the entire problem, but it doesn't. People should instead be suggesting that text editors better support ASCII delimiters so that we can use them roughly as easily as we use commas today.