[Haskell-cafe] Unicode Haskell source -- Yippie!

[Niklas Hambüchen]

A smart, recently proposed alternative is using a font that does this 
automatically for you: https://github.com/i-tu/Hasklig

In my opinion, this gives you all benefits of unicode syntax without 
imposing the drawbacks on others, and you don't even have to set up a 
custom input method to conveniently type them in.

Quoting:

Some Haskell programmers have resorted to unicode symbols in code as a 
solution (⇒, ← etc.). This opens a whole new can of worms. In addition 
to encoding/compatibility problems and all the reasons it never worked 
out for APL, these symbols are one-character-wide and therefore 
eye-strainingly small.

Hasklig solves this problem the way typographers have always solved 
ill-fitting characters which co-occur often: ligatures. The underlying 
code stays the same — only the representation changes.

On Thu 24 Apr 2014 21:02:30 BST, Tikhon Jelvis wrote:
> I'm actually a fan of using Unicode in my code. As people like to say,
> code is read more often than it's written, so I'm willing to make
> typing a bit harder in return for making the code prettier.
>
> Happily, typing Unicode characters is quite easy with a good editor
> (Emacs). I use the TeX input mode which just lets me use TeX names for
> symbols, but somebody has actually written a Haskell-specific mode
> which might be even better[1]. I might try it some day.
>
> One peculiar habit I have is using x₁ x₂ x₃ instead of x1, x2, x3 or
> x_1, x_2, x_3. I definitely find the Unicode version easier to read
> and work with, although it probably helps that Emacs highlights the
> number in a different color.
>
> Unfortunately, this is a minority opinion at the moment. Even in
> *this* day and age, people still find Unicode too difficult to type!
>
> For my internal code, this is not a problem, but it's kept me from
> putting any Unicode in public APIs. Shame.
>
> I also don't use UnicodeSyntax because Emacs can do most of the
> transformations transparently for me without changing the underlying
> file. You can turn this on by setting `haskell-font-lock-symbols' to
> t. I find it makes for much nicer code that's easier to read and, even
> more importantly, easier to skim.
>
> [1]: https://github.com/roelvandijk/emacs-haskell-unicode-input-method
>
>
> On Thu, Apr 24, 2014 at 12:51 PM, Roel van Dijk
> <vandijk.roel at gmail.com <mailto:vandijk.roel at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     I think it is a nice feature if used sparingly.
>
>     Note that while Unicode symbols are a normal part of the Haskell
>     language you can also turn on some Unicode syntax using the
>     UnicodeSyntax [1] language extension. This means the following
>     will be accepted by GHC:
>
>     (∈) ∷ ∀ α. Eq α ⇒ α → [α] → Bool
>     (∈) = elem
>
>     You might want to take a look at some packages I created that
>     define some Unicode symbols for common operators and values [2, 3, 4].
>
>     Opinions on whether this is a good idea vary. My anecdotal
>     observation is that it seems to be used more by people who speak a
>     native language that is already poorly served by ASCII. Perhaps
>     because they are already used to not being able to simply type
>     every character they need.
>
>     1
>     - http://www.haskell.org/ghc/docs/latest/html/users_guide/syntax-extns.html#unicode-syntax
>     2 - http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Unicode-symbols
>     3 - http://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-unicode-symbols
>     4 - http://hackage.haskell.org/package/containers-unicode-symbols
>
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