[Haskell-i18n] unicode notation \uhhhh implementation

[Ketil Z. Malde]

Ashley Yakeley <ashley@semantic.org> writes:

> Sure, but bear in mind Unicode names for characters are quite long, for 
> instance

>      GREEK SMALL LETTER THETA

Hmm...yes.  My personal preference would be something close to
(La)TeX.  Although it is perhaps a bit niche, it *is* a standard lhs
style (and one which I quite like, too).

Would we need to maintain the list manually, then?  Perhaps we could
standardise Unicode names, but additionally maintain short synonyms it
for greek letters and similar mathematical symbols, which I suspect
are rather commonly used?  

> Right, but whatever it is it really should be an ASCII character: the 
> point is to allow representation of all identifiers from 7-bit ASCII.

What's available, really?  "~!?$%.,^:;" are taken, along with quotes,
numerical symbols and parens.  Are '#' and '&' still free?  

Candidates I can think of might be:

1        &alpha  -> similar to HTML entities
2        #alpha  -> possible problems with C preprocessor?
3        _alpha  -> this is an existing identifier, but would be consistent
4        {alpha} -> also has a meaning already, even if problems should
                   be rather rare
5        {\alpha} -> TeX'y - is it meaningful H98?

Okay, shoot 'em down!

-kzm
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants