[r6rs-discuss] Case sensitivity

[Guillermo J. Rozas]

On Feb 21, 2009, at 1:31 PM, Shiro Kawai wrote:

> From: "Guillermo J. Rozas" <gjr6765 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [r6rs-discuss] Case sensitivity
> Date: Sat, 21 Feb 2009 13:02:04 -0800
>
>> Yes, absolutely, but why should we distinguish on the bases of 'case'
>> and not 'font'?  They are different glyphs after all.
>
> I think you're not serious, but just sarcastic, right?

No.  To me there is no fundamental difference.

Font is something that I use to make text easier to read.

Case is something that I use to make text easier to read.

The only difference is that some natural languages have conventions  
about
case but not about font.

But it is all about readability.

And my native language (Spanish) is one where case is hardly used at all
(proper names, not all nouns like in German, and start of sentence,  
but Spanish
is less order-dependent than English or German, so most words end up
being used with either initial case frequently).

To me case is like punctuation.  It assists legibility and nothing else.
Hence I should be able to change it to assist that without changing
meaning.

> I know there's a subtle issues between glyphs and characters,
> but I assume there is a general concensus on what's
> character-level difference and what's glyph-level difference.

Arbitrary distinction, as far as I'm concerned.  It is all about  
increasing
legibility, and hence a choice.

Cases have been established longer, because people can use them
when writing by hand, and most people have a hard time writing
more than one font.

But it is all about legibility after all.

>
>> And #!case-fold and #!no-case-fold is just punting the issue.
>> Now, I have to search for those if I want to read a piece of code and
>> not be
>> confused.
>
> Have you ever encountered such code in practice, instead of
> contrived examples?

I have not used R6RS, so no.  But that's one reason no to.