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

[Ian Tuomi]

On 27 Apr 2014, at 19:58, Rustom Mody wrote:
> If you had the choice would you allow that f-i ligature to be thus
> confusable with the more normal fi?  I probably wouldn't but nobody is
> asking us and the water that's flowed under the bridge cannot be 
> 'flowed'
> backwards (to the best of my knowledge!)
>
> In case that seems far-fetched consider the scenario:
> 1. Somebody loads (maybe innocently) the code involving variables like
> 'fine'
> into a 'ligature-happy 'IDE/editor'
> 2. The editor quietly changes all the fine to fine.
> 3. Since all those variables are in local scope nothing untoward is 
> noticed
> 4. Until someone loads it into an 'old-fashioned' editor... and 
> then...

I develop Hasklig, and have enjoyed the discussion about the pros and 
cons of ligatures in coding fonts. However, I really must protest this 
line of reasoning since it is based on false premises.

As an opentype feature, ligatures have nothing to do with the 'fi' and 
'fl' unicode points, (which are legacy only, and heavily discouraged by 
the unicode consortium), or with unicode at all. The encoding of the 
file could be pure ASCII for all the ligatures care. The font used 
changes how the text looks, and nothing else.

When speaking of special unicode symbols in code, I agree with most 
objections raised against them :)

br,
Ian

P.S. Sorry for potential repost - I'm getting automatic rejects