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From: craig@dcl-cs.UUCP (Craig Wylie)
Newsgroups: net.internat
Subject: fonts, colours, greping, context sensitivity and the future
Message-ID: <970@dcl-cs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Feb-86 07:55:27 EST
Article-I.D.: dcl-cs.970
Posted: Tue Feb  4 07:55:27 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Feb-86 10:37:05 EST
References: <343@ur-tut.UUCP> <832@inset.UUCP>
Reply-To: craig@comp.lancs.ac.uk (Craig Wylie)
Distribution: net
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University.
Lines: 70

>Is ``italicness' an attribute or a separate font?
>
>What if I have a private set of attributes that I want characters to have
>that don't fit into the codeset currently in use? What is happening about
>a design of a regular way of redefining a ``character'' that allows
>me simply to change the definition of what a character is, at the head
>of my program, that will still allow all the other stuff (ctype, strcmp)
>etc. to work, yet allow me to diddle with attributes as I see fit? Get
>your thinking caps on, Netland, and see if you can come up with something.
>If you don't think that this is important, go read net.dead-sea-scrolls
>or something.


Big problems though  --  grep will have to be able to read and interpret
these redefinitions so that it knows what is what inside the program. At
one point I was thinking of suggesting that the database of printer
characteristics should include how to generate bit images if required. The
program could then have a preprocessor command (#CHAR_DEF ?) which gave
the information required for the pattern to be used (ie you could specify
the bit pattern of a certain character, such as the Swedish symbol of the
sun and say :-


#CHAR_DEF $ '100010101
	     ....
	     ....

		     '

etc.)


This however is not going to make greping for such characters particularly
easy. I still feel that the problem must be with the Terminals and
editors that we are using. If we can generate any particular combination
of colour and font while we are typing (and change in the middle of
a sentence) then pattern matching will be that much easier, but very few
of us can. We don't all have full colour graphics workstations available to
us all the time. 

If we want to be able to say :-

	grep -font=ROMAN -pica=12 -colour=RED "Syntax error on line....

then grep and programs like it are going to have to be given the ability to
know the context of all the text they are examining. This in turn means some
sort of standard, not just for programs but for Word and Text procressors,
editors, printers, linkers, compilers, pretty printers .....
hoo boy (to coin a phrase). Perhaps this really is a sign 
that our current operating systems are on the way out, we need
something better.

Even then different operating systems will have different 'standards' that
will have to be translated (if possible  --  pass the straight jacket please)
when documents are passed. I think I'm going to take up water colours.


Back in the realms of the living dead (have you ever met Stephen Muir
from Lancaster ?) it should be possible to define extensions to the 
preprocessor to allow character definitions at the head of programs
and to give programs such as grep some form of context sensitivity.

Craig ( I think).

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