RE: indentation (was Re: About the article) in "The DSSSList Digest V3 #27"

["Didier PH Martin" <martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Mark (I guess your first name is Mark?)

<Comment>
	But it seems to me the point Didier is trying to make is not that
"block style" is morally superior in some sense, but that it is better
suited to a specific purpose: teaching/selling DSSSL outside the existing
community.  I'm inclined to agree.  While there are LISP/Scheme programmers
out there, C, C++, Java etc. appear to be much more common, and (in my
moderate experience) the block style is much more common.  To the extent
that's true (and I will grant that it varies with the particular audience),
changing the style of "blocking" as you try to teach someone a new concept
unrelated to the indentation/blocking/grouping style seems to be making
things more difficult for the student than is strictly necessary.  If the
idea were to persuade the student that this is a hard subject, that might be
a good thing ....
</comment>

<reply>
This is exactly what I meant. Thank you Mark.

My goal is to help sell DSSSL outside of our limited community but to do
that I have to start from where they are and show them that the language is
versatile enough that it can even mimic the block based approach.

Also, I personally use Emacs but I am also able to put myself in the shoes
of somebody who never saw nor did any work with lisp based constructs. And
again, as you stated, is not to convince people that the usual lisp base
notation is bad (I use it myself for my own scripts) but that, if we want
that dsssl become more accepted by a larger audience, we have to adapt to
different ways of thinking. The virtue of scheme or DSSSL is that we can
mimic other type of constructs and then have the language more accessible to
newcomers. If we get a newcommer that says. Its not harder than CSS or XSL,
we gained something: somebody who has now freedom of choice. Also, someone
who will ask for improvements and this is translated for Dsssl as future and
evolution.
</reply>

regards
Didier PH Martin
mailto:martind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://www.netfolder.com


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