Using proportional fonts in Acme for Programming

[Aaron W. Hsu]

So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources, and I
discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the use of
proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised me, to say the
least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was the language they
were using, and had managed to get a decent indenting pattern for it that
was just as readable, without messing things up for proportional font
users.

I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a technique
actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some questions to you.

Firstly, how many of you using Acme for programming on a daily basis remap
your fonts so that the fixed width font is the main one that you use?

Secondly, if you do use proportional width fonts, why, and what troubles
did you encounter; what benefits did you encounter?

Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases like
Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following
indentation scheme, and how would you resolve these indentation problems
with proportional width fonts if you did continue to use them?

(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

Thanks!

Aaron W. Hsu

[Paul Donnelly]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Secondly, if you do use proportional width fonts, why, and what
troubles did you encounter; what benefits did you encounter?

You can't very well engage in weird formatting tricks, but I'm not much
a fan of those anyway. IMO, the more attractive letters and generally
lesser character width more than make up for the inability to precisely
align columns that don't contain whitespace. I just use tabs to give
myself a semantic clue.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases
like Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following
indentation scheme,

No. Lisp indentation is hairy enough that I'd rather have the editor do
it anyway (I'll take a structure editor too, if you please), so Acme is
right out. Lisp code is so structurally complex that the indentation
scheme I use in C doesn't work so well. I really want arguments to a
function to begin at the same column, and for macro bodies to be
indented by two characters precisely, so I don't get hopelessly lost. I
just go on back to Emacs for Lisp coding.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
and how would you resolve these indentation problems with proportional
width fonts if you did continue to use them?

I'd make leading spaces inherit their width from the characters above.

(let ((foo bar)
(something else))
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

So in this example, the first space on line two would have the width of
"(", the second the width of an "l", and so on. But the space in
"something else" uses whatever width is defined in the font, since
spacing would get weird otherwise.

You couldn't do

(let ((foo bar)
(something else))
...)

and expect proper alignment, but like I said, I don't like that trick
anyway.

[roger peppe]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Firstly, how many of you using Acme for programming on a daily basis remap
your fonts so that the fixed width font is the main one that you use?

i use proportional fonts in acme for programming.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Secondly, if you do use proportional width fonts, why, and what troubles did
you encounter; what benefits did you encounter?

i use them because they're more readable, and i get more
characters per line than in a similarly sized fixed-width font.

in C-like syntax, everything works just fine; a single
tab character is ideal for indentation.
use of tabs other than at the start of a line won't
guarantee alignment with other fonts, but this rarely matters
too much.

in LISP, i sometimes ended up using a fixed-width font,
due to the convention of aligning a subform with part
of its parent, as you point out. variable-width fonts can
work ok in lisp, although the indentation tends to
end up slightly non-standard (although still passable).

in haskell, i used proportional spacing with single-tab
indentation, and it worked just fine apart from, AFAIR,
multiple assignments for a single let - i just always
used let...in.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases like
Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following indentation
scheme, and how would you resolve these indentation problems with
proportional width fonts if you did continue to use them?
       (let ([foo bar]
             [something else])
         (some-func (called again)
                    (with fun indentation)
           (and yet)
           (another)))

i presume you meant this:

(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

using a varwidth font, i'd format this as:

(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func
(called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

(note 4-space indent, not 2-space indent
for the some-func arguments. not perfect, but ok, i reckon)

i found unlike macros, functions rarely need multiline continuation,
but i think the case is arguable. as i said, i've done it both ways.

PS. i'd really like to see an acme-integrated lisp environment. one of
these years
i'll get around to it...

[matt]

I always use proportional, 10 years ish now

I always use tabs not spaces for indenting

I don't remember it ever being a problem, certainly not one unsolved by
clicking on Font

[Robert Raschke]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources, and I
discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the use of
proportional fonts for programming in Acme.

I've been programming using Wily, Acme, and Acme SAC for 15 years now, and
this has always been using proportional fonts. Very, very rarely do I need
to look at fixed font representation, and I can't remember when the last
time actually was?

I am so used to this, that I find it difficult to read code in a fixed font,
color overloaded, highlighting editor. All the flashiness detracts from the
code I'm trying to understand.

Sometimes when I have to understand a bit of foreign code, I go through the
code and re-indent to fit my view of the world. I use this as an exercise to
help me understand what the code does, not because I don't like the style.

For code that uses brackets of some persuasion for grouping code, the
double-click text selection shows me exactly the grouping. And I don't get
mislead by wrong indentation very easily.

Proportional fonts can also greatly reduce pointless discussions about
coding style.

Robby

[Ethan Grammatikidis]

On Thu, 13 Aug 2009 09:14:19 GMT

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources, and I
discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the use of
proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised me, to say the
least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was the language they
were using, and had managed to get a decent indenting pattern for it that
was just as readable, without messing things up for proportional font
users.
I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a technique
actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some questions to you.
Firstly, how many of you using Acme for programming on a daily basis remap
your fonts so that the fixed width font is the main one that you use?
Secondly, if you do use proportional width fonts, why, and what troubles
did you encounter; what benefits did you encounter?

I don't program on a daily basis, but using a proportional font in rio
I'm finding it so much easier on the eyes that I hold back from opening
xterms and from switching acme windows into the fixed-width font.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases like
Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following
indentation scheme, and how would you resolve these indentation problems
with proportional width fonts if you did continue to use them?
(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

This particular form of indentation is the only thing I'd be worried
about, and where a great deal of nesting is not required it's never
strictly necessary. In a certain scripting environment with a C-like
syntax and a very weak editor I got into the habit of treating parentheses
as block structure when the parameter list is long:

llSetPrimitiveParams([
PRIM_TYPE, PRIM_TYPE_CYLINDER, 0,
<open_cut_start, open_cut_end, 0>, hollow,
<0, 0, 0>, <1, 1, 0>, <0, 0, 0>
]);

That's not a practical style in Lisp, of course. I've thought about
this in the past as I was never entirely comfortable with some very
common indenting styles. Gnu style has 2-character indents, that's not
an indent, it's natural roughness! The Linux kernel style on the other
hand has full tabs. 8-character tabs break things up a little too much
for my eyes so I set my editor to have narrower tabs when loading code
from the kernel tree. This worked great so long as no code had a special
indent (as Aaron's Lisp code above) nor was aligned after the indent
(e.g. comments on the same line as code). This eventually led me to
consider an editor which dynamically managed indents, displaying the
code quite differently to the fixed indents in the source file. Such an
editor could work well with proportional fonts and s-expressions together,
but I can't work out whether it would be 'too clever' - i.e. irritating.

[Daniel Lyons]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources,
and I discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the
use of proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised
me, to say the least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was
the language they were using, and had managed to get a decent
indenting pattern for it that was just as readable, without messing
things up for proportional font users.
I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a
technique actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some
questions to you.

Bjarne Stroustrup actually advocates this style in "The C++
Programming Language."

This discussion reminds me of this elastic tab stops concept:

http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/

I don't think it made it into any editors, but it would support the
kind of fancy alignment I like to have in my code while also
supporting real fonts, which I would prefer to use.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases
like Lisp code, where you very often see something like the
following indentation scheme, and how would you resolve these
indentation problems with proportional width fonts if you did
continue to use them?
(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

I bet you could set up Emacs to use a proportional font. It can do
anything, right? :)

I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.

—
Daniel Lyons

[David Leimbach]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources, and I

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the use of
proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised me, to say the
least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was the language they were
using, and had managed to get a decent indenting pattern for it that was
just as readable, without messing things up for proportional font users.
I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a technique
actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some questions to you.

Bjarne Stroustrup actually advocates this style in "The C++ Programming
Language."
http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/
I don't think it made it into any editors, but it would support the kind of
fancy alignment I like to have in my code while also supporting real fonts,
which I would prefer to use.
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases like

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following indentation
scheme, and how would you resolve these indentation problems with
proportional width fonts if you did continue to use them?
(let ([foo bar]
[something else])
(some-func (called again)
(with fun indentation)
(and yet)
(another)))

I bet you could set up Emacs to use a proportional font. It can do
anything, right? :)
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.

Acme has good enough support for Lisp in that I can edit the program buffer,
and then re-load it all in Acme via the "win" program. I use it with SBCL
this way on my mac actually.

Emacs + SLIME is pretty nice, but sometimes quite a bit more than I need.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
—
Daniel Lyons

[ron minnich]

I always get a kick out of this
exchange:http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/comp.os.plan9/msg02052.html

[erik quanstrom]

Post by ron minnich
I always get a kick out of this
exchange:http://www.usenet.com/newsgroups/comp.os.plan9/msg02052.html

it took me at least 5 seconds to realize that abaco was formatting
that page correctly. ☺

the key to the joke, however, is there is a vast difference between
leading indentation and stuff like

if(x == 1 &&
y == 2)

which just doesn't work well with proportional fonts.

i guess this email is an excercize in making presotto unfunny
in 3 easy steps.

- erik

[Roman V. Shaposhnik]

Post by Daniel Lyons
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.

Speaking of which (or may be not ;-)) is there anybody using Lua
on Plan9?

Thanks,
Roman.

P.S. The more I look into Lua (as a way to help C refuge start
doing some functional stuff) the more it seems that the two have
a lot in common when it comes to software architecture.

[Robert Raschke]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik

Post by Daniel Lyons
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.

Speaking of which (or may be not ;-)) is there anybody using Lua
on Plan9?
Thanks,
Roman.
P.S. The more I look into Lua (as a way to help C refuge start
doing some functional stuff) the more it seems that the two have
a lot in common when it comes to software architecture.
Last time I tried, the standard Lua compiled out of the box under the APE.

Great little language. I use it in my day job (together with Erlang). It's
implementation is indeed just as enlightening as the Plan 9 code. An
exercise in doing exactly what is required and no more. Very elegant in my
eyes.

Robby

[Roman V. Shaposhnik]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Last time I tried, the standard Lua compiled out of the box under the APE.

That is good to know. Still, I'd rather see it run without APE.

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Great little language. I use it in my day job (together with Erlang).

*together* with Erlang?!?! That I have to know more about. Perhaps
off-list.

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
It's implementation is indeed just as enlightening as the Plan 9
code. An exercise in doing exactly what is required and no more. Very
elegant in my eyes.

Couldn't agree more!

Thanks,
Roman.

[John Floren]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Last time I tried, the standard Lua compiled out of the box under the APE.

Just fetched the tarball for lua-5.1.4, changed the CC=gcc to CC=cc
and tried "make posix". After lots of complaining about the -O2
option, I see:

/usr/john/lua-5.1.4/src/liolib.c:178[stdin:2686] incompatible types:
"IND STRUCT _1_" and "INT" for op "AS"

I'm going to poke around and look into things, also try compiling with
different targets ("make linux" etc.), but can I get a description of
exactly how you compiled it, Robert?


John

[Josh Wood]

Post by John Floren
Just fetched the tarball for lua-5.1.4, changed the CC=gcc to CC=cc
and tried "make posix". After lots of complaining about the -O2
"IND STRUCT _1_" and "INT" for op "AS"
I'm going to poke around and look into things, also try compiling with
different targets ("make linux" etc.), but can I get a description of
exactly how you compiled it, Robert?

make ansi

-Josh

[John Floren]

Post by Josh Wood

Post by John Floren
Just fetched the tarball for lua-5.1.4, changed the CC=gcc to CC=cc
and tried "make posix". After lots of complaining about the -O2
"IND STRUCT _1_" and "INT" for op "AS"
I'm going to poke around and look into things, also try compiling with
different targets ("make linux" etc.), but can I get a description of
exactly how you compiled it, Robert?

make ansi
-Josh

Yeah, I'm kinda dumb... I tried make generic and make ansi without
doing a make clean (after trying a make posix) so I had some old crap
lying around.

Thanks


John

[Robert Raschke]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Last time I tried, the standard Lua compiled out of the box under the APE.

That is good to know. Still, I'd rather see it run without APE.

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Great little language. I use it in my day job (together with Erlang).

*together* with Erlang?!?! That I have to know more about. Perhaps
off-list.

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
It's implementation is indeed just as enlightening as the Plan 9
code. An exercise in doing exactly what is required and no more. Very
elegant in my eyes.

Couldn't agree more!
Thanks,
Roman.

[Pavel Klinkovsky]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Speaking of which (or may be not ;-)) is there anybody using Lua
on Plan9?

I am "playing" with Lua on my Plan9 computer...

BTW I have found a difference between Linux and Plan9 version:
- Linux version can handle "dividing by 0" without crash of Lua
interpretter,
- Plan9 version cannot. ;-)

Pavel

[Roman V. Shaposhnik]

Post by Pavel Klinkovsky

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Speaking of which (or may be not ;-)) is there anybody using Lua
on Plan9?

I am "playing" with Lua on my Plan9 computer...

What do you use it for? Any kind of fun projects? My idea is to try
and see whether Plan9+Lua would be a more useful combination for
building Web service environment than werc.

Thanks,
Roman.

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
What do you use it for? Any kind of fun projects? My idea is to try
and see whether Plan9+Lua would be a more useful combination for
building Web service environment than werc.
Thanks,
Roman.

Kenji has written a webdav server for pegasus (Kenji's httpd branch)
using lua.

[Skip Tavakkolian]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
Speaking of which (or may be not ;-)) is there anybody using Lua
on Plan9?
Roman.

Kenji has written a webdav server for pegasus (Kenji's httpd branch)
using lua.

[Aaron W. Hsu]

Post by Daniel Lyons
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.

Maybe that should be my next side project.

Aaron W. Hsu

[Daniel Lyons]

Post by Aaron W. Hsu

Post by Daniel Lyons
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of
Lisp variant.

Maybe that should be my next side project.

If that's something you're thinking about doing, let me suggest you
take a look at Clojure. The Java aspect aside, it is a good compromise
in design between Scheme and Lisp and introduces lots of good ideas.
This is something I would want to do but I have a long way to go with
Plan 9 before I think I could be serious about it.

—
Daniel Lyons

[Roman V. Shaposhnik]

Post by Daniel Lyons

Post by Aaron W. Hsu

Post by Daniel Lyons
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of
Lisp variant.

Maybe that should be my next side project.

If that's something you're thinking about doing, let me suggest you
take a look at Clojure. The Java aspect aside, it is a good compromise
in design between Scheme and Lisp and introduces lots of good ideas.
This is something I would want to do but I have a long way to go with
Plan 9 before I think I could be serious about it.

I looked at it for a while and came with a realization that it could
be just a tad heavier than what I need for most of the stuff I do. Plus
I'm not sure how to port it to Plan9 without first porting the JVM.

Thanks,
Roman.

[Daniel Lyons]

Post by Roman V. Shaposhnik
I looked at it for a while and came with a realization that it could
be just a tad heavier than what I need for most of the stuff I do. Plus
I'm not sure how to port it to Plan9 without first porting the JVM.

I actually meant to create a new Plan 9-specific Lisp variant, perhaps
stealing some of Clojure's new ideas. Especially with respect to
parallelism, the standard library and a few other things. I like that
I can call into Java libs from Clojure but that's not the most
interesting thing about it to me.

Another thing which would be cool would be something like scsh.

[Aaron W. Hsu]

If that's something you're thinking about doing, let me suggest you take
a look at Clojure. The Java aspect aside, it is a good compromise in
design between Scheme and Lisp and introduces lots of good ideas. This
is something I would want to do but I have a long way to go with Plan 9
before I think I could be serious about it.

Sorry, I'm a Scheme programmer, and Clojure does not appeal to me in
enough aspects (very few, actually) to make me even learn how to use it.
Rather, I think a very small number of simple conveniences would suffice
to make Scheme programming very convenient with Acme. Already, most of the
necessary features are there, and I am using Acme pleasantly right now in
my daily Scheme work.

Aaron W. Hsu

[Noah Evans]

For Lisp variants ask Alex Shinn(***@gmail.com), he's got an
interesting scheme implementation mostly working. It's a summer of
code project this year.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
So, I was browsing around the other day looking at Acme resources, and I
discovered an old post from 1995 wherein someone advocated the use of
proportional fonts for programming in Acme. This surprised me, to say the
least. He even went as far as to mention that SML was the language they were
using, and had managed to get a decent indenting pattern for it that was
just as readable, without messing things up for proportional font users.
I have to admit that I'm a bit skeptical about whether such a technique
actually works, and so, I thought I would pose some questions to you.

Bjarne Stroustrup actually advocates this style in "The C++ Programming
Language."
 http://nickgravgaard.com/elastictabstops/
I don't think it made it into any editors, but it would support the kind of
fancy alignment I like to have in my code while also supporting real fonts,
which I would prefer to use.

Post by Aaron W. Hsu
Thirdly, would you continue using proportional width fonts in cases like
Lisp code, where you very often see something like the following indentation
scheme, and how would you resolve these indentation problems with
proportional width fonts if you did continue to use them?
       (let ([foo bar]
             [something else])
         (some-func (called again)
                   (with fun indentation)
          (and yet)
          (another)))

I bet you could set up Emacs to use a proportional font. It can do anything,
right? :)
I'd love it if Acme or Plan 9 had good support for some kind of Lisp
variant.
—
Daniel Lyons

[Akshat Kumar]

Post by Noah Evans
interesting scheme implementation mostly working. It's a summer of
code project this year.

See also my post: http://ninetimes.cat-v.org/news/2009/07/19/0/
and the included link to setting it up on Plan 9.


Best,
ak

[Akshat Kumar]

Speaking of fonts in Acme, using the default,
I spent extra amount of time tracking down
a bug in my gs(1) source, which was the mix-up
between -lijs and -Iijs. Apparently 'I' is shorter
than 'l' by some portion of a pixel.


how could I possibly miss that
ak

P.S.: This isn't Acme's fault - it's the same trouble
in the font I'm using to type this message - in
GMail in Firefox.

[Aaron W. Hsu]

On Sat, 15 Aug 2009 06:34:03 -0400, Akshat Kumar

Post by Akshat Kumar
Speaking of fonts in Acme, using the default,
I spent extra amount of time tracking down
a bug in my gs(1) source, which was the mix-up
between -lijs and -Iijs. Apparently 'I' is shorter
than 'l' by some portion of a pixel.

I use Times in Acme. That distinguishes things pretty well.

Aaron W. Hsu

[Aaron W. Hsu]

Post by Noah Evans
interesting scheme implementation mostly working. It's a summer of
code project this year.

Indeed, there are a number of fairly portable Scheme implementations that
I could see working with Plan 9.

Aaron W. Hsu